With Hollywood apparently in some sort of two week slump until the superhero movies resume, I went to go see a couple of films that ordinarily would not have really made it onto my radar. Most recent was Ted. I was surprisingly unexposed to any promotional material beyond the occasional internet banner ad and was highly skeptical when my brother mentioned it to me, especially when I heard that Seth McFarlane was doing the voice. Given the assumptions about his ego engendered by the cartoons I had long ago given up on watching, I could not see how this movie could be a good thing, and the idea of Mark Wahlberg mixing with McFarlane rang some warning bells I could not articulate. But what the hell. The other option was a whacky not-actually-a-romantic-comedy-even-if-no-one-told-the-female-lead-character, so I watched “Ted”.

A lot of people might think it would be cool to be right as often as I am, but it isn’t really. Pleasant surprises are one of the things other people should cherish, because it seems like Hollywood provides so few of them. The McFarlane-Wahlberg connection that made me uneasy? Because I tend to like Wahlberg and his movies…His heretofore not-consciously-noted fetish for New England contemporary blue-collar “culture”. It just seems like something that comes up in a lot of his movies, and seems to be a personal axe McFarlane has to grind. And it’s sort of amusing the first couple of times you see those kind of people parodied, but after 8 more seasons of Family Guy than it was probably creatively prudent to make, we’ve pretty much reached the saturation point of jokes to be made at the expense of that demographic, no matter how much of an outsider Seth felt growing up among them.

But let me try to say something pleasant about the movie: It made me perfectly content with my having given up on Family Guy over the last few years, much less the tired variants on that theme Fox packs into its lineup. It also helped me to understand why Family Guy episodes are only about 20 minutes long – because no one wants to sit through 105 minutes of the same thing.

“Ted” is the usual muddle of 1980’s pop culture and cult entertainment references, making various affiliated performers jump through hoops for McFarlane’s private amusement & gratification, pointless cheap shots at other celebrities, and then old tricks like spending way too much time on failed jokes, in the hopes of getting partial credit for persistence or something. And of course there is the always timeless and inspiringly original joke where reference is made to a character’s resemblance to a character played by the same actor in a different film, which in an amazing display of restraint and avoidance of overuse, was only tried twice in this film. Oh, and they really broke ground with their “dignified, authoritative serious-sounding British-voiced narrator saying things such narrators typically do not say”!

McFarlane, as the voice of the eponymous teddy bear, has the sheer gall to utter a piece of dialogue criticizing an obscure actor’s acting ability, despite having clearly reached the limits of his voice-acting versatility (imagine alternate lines in the voices of Peter Griffin & Brian the dog, and you’ve got Ted down), and continually employing Mila Kunis, whose acting style consists of widening her eyes and making her voice high-pitched, and aside from that, never ever changing expressions.

Also, Kunis gives lectures about maturity and responsibility to her love interest which are somewhat bewildering, as the only hint that her character is out of college is that she sometimes wears suits to work and dates a 35 year old, who is being played by an actor who has to be at least 40, given how far back I can recall his career starting.

But back to McFarlane’s casting issues, he seems to be attempting to follow the current trend in comedy films, of having a group of people who always work together and so we’re supposed to appreciate the lack of actual jokes in movies, because we’re being invited into this cool comedy gang! It’s okay that there’s nothing original insightful or particularly funny in the film because we’re hanging with our buddies, Seth McFarlane, Mila Kunis & Patrick Warburton (or Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill & Seth Rogen or Will Ferrell & Steve Carell or Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson), so it’s still a good time, right? No. STFU, Generation X slackers and start getting some joke-writers to put actual clever lines in your films.

So Family Guy viewers, remember the long-running fist fights between Peter and the giant chicken, and how hilarious they were before the show beat that joke into the ground? Well, they do that in this movie, but it’s between a man and a flying teddy bear! And after about an hour of 80s references, it should surprise absolutely no one that the fight is triggered by a reference to Teddy Ruxpin. You had to know it was coming because NOT mentioning it given the film’s subject matter had to mean they were saving it for something really good! Or not… Another joke McFarlane is so proud of that he had to steal from one of the most watched and highly anticipated Family Guy episodes in recent memory is a commentary on the vowel-stressing singers of the early 1990s. One of the Star Wars homages done by the show and released as a DVD single had a quick gag clip showing a guy in a flannel shirt singing in an exaggerated 90s style, and it was very on-target and amusing. Fine, you got a laugh out of that one, so let’s just move on, but no. McFarlane, among his many other talents, is a gifted singer, which is why he subjects his TV audience to about three more duets with his characters and Frank Sinatra Jr than anyone ever asked for, and he repeats the 90s gag with Ted just so no one can doubt that was Seth singing in the clip. And it runs longer than that clip gag on the show did, and just when you think it’s over because the movie cuts to something else, it goes BACK to Ted STILL singing “Only Wanna Be With You.” Maybe they ran out of time to acquire the rights to do a cover so he had to sing a generic 90s sounding song for the show, and he was taking this opportunity to show what he can do with an actual song.