There are movies that you know are gonna be fantastic.  Then there are movies that you hope will be fantastic, but you have a sneaking suspicion Hollywood could really screw the pooch on this movie with little to no effort.  I was definitely in the latter camp with Ted, but fortunately it’s a good-time film that will make Seth MacFarlane fans very happy and leave everyone else in the theater with a ton of off-color laughs.  Does it kinda feel like a two hour live version of tv’s Family Guy?  Well, yeah.  But we’re talking about the story of a living, toking (no, I didn’t mean talking, though he does that too) teddy bear here, so that’s not a bad thing.

Picture this: a beautiful Christmas Day in Boston.  Snow on the ground, kids bundled up tight against the cold, Patrick Stewart’s soothing Shakespearean voice narrating the festivities.  And a little boy wishing on a Christmas star that his beloved teddy bear could be his living, breathing best friend forever.  Ahh, Currier & Ives, right?  Uh, back it up a sec.  This is, after all, Seth MacFarlane’s Boston, so you know something’s coming.  Sure enough, before you can say “isn’t that sweet?”, there’s a flurry of crude, made all the funnier by Stewart’s deadpan delivery.  The crude, unapologetic humor only snowballs — taking a winter motif and running with it y’all — from there.  As the years go by, little John Bennett and his pal Ted go from sweet playtime buddies to beer-n-bong bros.  Cut to present day, and John’s girlfriend of 4 years wants John to grow up and not spend so much time (getting stoned) with Ted.  Let’s see how far that gets her.

Let’s get this out of the way right now; if you aren’t open minded enough to be able to find the humor in picking on the human condition — prejudices and all — then you probably won’t “get” this movie.  If you’re offended by bullseye comments about how human foibles, or comments about people’s looks/attitude/abilities that have absolutely no edit button (but voice thoughts just about anyone has ever had)…well, you’re probably not reading this review because you’ve already decided this type of humor isn’t for you.  But anyway, consider yourselves forewarned and let’s move on.

It’s not all fart jokes and bong hits.  Okay, maybe it kinda is.  However, there are a few downers with this buzz.  If anyone knows how to beat a dead horse, gag-wise, it’s MacFarlane.  A few of the jokes go on way too long, which seems to be a trusty stand-by in his other work.  Pacing, edits, scene blocking, even MacFarlane’s voices, are all very American Dad!/Family Guy.  But it’s also very tongue-in-cheek; at one point Ted says “I do not sound like Peter Griffin!”  Ah, but you kinda do Ted.  But you pointed it out yourself, so you get a pass.

The fuckup dude isn’t quite as funny in flesh and blood.  Family Guy’s clueless Peter and American Dad!’s borderline psychotic Stan are hilarious because we know they’re caricatures.  But how many of us know a thirty-something who sits around and does nothing but look forward to his next bong hit or beer?  It further solidifies the “30-something manchild” stereotype, and it’s uncomfortable, due in no small part to Mark Wahlberg’s excellent ability to bring John to life.  It’s a subtle and honest performance, and yeah I’m saying that about a character who thinks fart jokes are high art.  Sure, this is “Marky Mark”, but it’s also the actor from The Fighter and Invincible.  It doesn’t hurt that Wahlberg is from Boston, so the accent is genuine instead of cringeworthy.

Mila Kunis (Black Swan, That 70s Show) plays beleaguered girlfriend Lori, and she’s perfect in the role of Macfarlane Woman Who Is Too Damn Good For That Smuck.  Many will recognize her work  as Meg Griffin, the awkward teen daughter in Family Guy, so seeing here in this film is no surprise.  What is a surprise are some of the cameos, which give Ted more than a few wink-wink bits of humor.  Norah Jones and Tom Skerritt play skewered versions of themselves, and Ryan Reynolds has a part that is just too much fun to spoil with anything more than a heads-up.  But the true champ is Sam Jones, the star of the 80s camp classic Flash Gordon.  He plays himself as amped up, coked out uber-partier; think Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold and Kumar movies, but on steroids.  As a huge fan of Flash Gordon — and of it’s killer soundtrack — I cheered when I saw him, and he does crazy over-the-top just as well now as he did back when he was on Mongo.

MacFarlane knows how to whip together many different types of humor into a wild and crazy ride.  His ability to take farce, lowbrow and droll humor, spoofs, and slapstick– and still manage to work a little blue into network tv — has been a mainstay of Family Guy and American Dad! for years.   With Ted, he’s off his network TV leash, and he delivers a fun, lowbrow film that has more than it’s share of highlights.