I Can't Bear It

Year: 2015

Director: Seth MacFarlane

Cast: Seth MacFarlane, Mark Wahlberg, Amanda Seyfried

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The most striking thing about Ted 2 is the fact that it’s actually marginally better than the original Ted. It’s not like that was actually a high bar to clear, and it doesn’t exactly do the film any justice, but it does put the film in the unique and infinitesimally miniscule pantheon of comedy sequels that improve upon their predecessors.

That’s realty not saying much.

Ted 2 opens with perhaps the most unlikely plot twist of all: Seth MacFarlane getting married. Yes, the toked-up, foul-mouthed, magically sentient teddy bear Ted (MacFarlane, who also directs and writes and may or may not have provided some of the sperm) is getting hitched, to his airhead cashier girlfriend Tami-Lyn (Jessica Barth). A year later, when they decide to adopt a kid to save their marriage (a paralyzingly stupid decision that is not once played as a joke, which worries me), it comes to light that Ted is not viewed as a person, but as property by the state of Massachusetts.

He quickly loses his job, his money, and even his marriage when it is annulled by the state. Together with his best friend John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) - who is still reeling from his offscreen divorce with Mila Kunis – and their lawyer Sam (Amanda Seyfried), a 26-year-old who is working pro bono because it’s her first case, they must prove Ted’s personhood to the court and save his family.

Unfortunately, the deeply weird and covetous Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) has returned and has teamed up with Hasbro executive Tom Jessup (John Carroll Lynch, AKA freaking Twisty the Clown from American Horror Story: Freak Show) to steal Ted back, vivisect him, and mass produce a new line of living teddy bears.

Could you imagine? A world of cloned MacFarlanes running around? That’s straight outta Lovecraft, right there.

So let’s get down to brass tacks. Is Ted 2 funny? The answer to that is a dissertation-worthy quandary, but I’ll attempt to simplify it here: Yes and no.

When the humor in Ted 2 is Yes, it is spot-on terrific. If you’re open to the sort of vulgar profanities that are MacFarlane’s major export, there’s a lot to like. There are four lines that are eye-poppingly funny no matter how you slice in (delivered – in descending order of brilliance – by Wahlberg, Barth, a featured extra, and MacFarlane), four or five laugh-out-loud funny setpieces, a couple decent running gags, and a solid array of the previous film’s Clerks-type conversational that rounds out the pack.

But when Ted 2’s humor is No, it instantly and incurably derails the production. On top of the excessive Family Guy overspill (useless non sequitur cutaways, inexplicable musical numbers, and regurgitated pop culture references abound, though there’s thankfully not too much of the show’s excessive violence or over-the-top, anti-comedic pacing), the film stages an overabundance of messy slapstick (sometimes quite literally), reheated Ted 1 gags, and – oh – unadulterated bigotry.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Seth MacFarlane from Ted 2, it’s that he thinks gay people are terrifying. And that’s he quite possibly never met a black/Asian/transgender/Portuguese person. And that he might not even be aware that Latinos are real. Also, he thinks domestic abuse is hilarious. 

It’s every kind of racist, transphobic, homophobic, reductive waste that spends an entire two hours discussing the topic of personhood but labors to make sure that the only lines given to a black female are exclusively about her being stereotypically black. It’s hateful, damaging, and ugly. And while it’s not as ubiquitously present as some of his other “edgy” work, the film’s faux-progressive subject matter throws each of these moments into sharp relief.

Also he makes a “fifty shades of bear” joke. That’s not even a pun!

There is exactly one good thing about Ted 2 aside from its occasional spurts of comedy the core performers are pretty uniformly terrific: Jessica Barth is the film’s secret weapon, giving depth to a character so one note that her sheet music could be written on a Post-It, and everybody else fares more or less equally well. Amanda Seyfried brings a necessary moral center to the proceedings, Mark Wahlberg is astoundingly adept at navigating tricky comic timing, and I can even grudgingly admit that Seth MacFarlane can deliver a line when he’s in the mood.

Some of the cameos are weak (and it should come as no surprise that returning actor Sam Jones is wooden as a post, considering his track record), but for the most part, everybody in the film feels like they belong in this universe, for better or for worse, even the bit parts (AKA anybody who isn’t white or pretty). The only disappointment is Giovanni Ribisi, who doesn’t turn in a bad performance so much as one that can’t match the effervescent oddness that rendered him the best part of the original film.

I'm sorry, man. I loved you as Phoebe's brother in Friends. And as That One Guy in Every Movie.

So that just leaves us with the odds and ends (which, frankly, is what most of the plot is composed of). The conflict wraps up too fast and fails to reach the inexplicably high stakes of the first film, the camerawork sometimes resorts to sloppy reality TV-esque handheld that kills the pacing of an otherwise slickly edited movie, and the Seth MacFarlane original song “Mean Old Moon” is surprisingly pretty, but hyperbolically useless and self-indulgent from a narrative perspective.

Once again the CGI used to create Ted is flawless, so much so that you forget that he’s not actually a real thing. So congrats to the visual effects crew for putting together the most effortlessly valuable portion of the movie, for which they will get the lowest amount of credit. Hollywood is weird. Stay in school, kids.

Oh, and Ted 2 attempts to wrap things up in a soppy emotional climax that it in no way earns. So, at the end, what I have to say is this: Ted 2 should be half an hour shorter and Seth MacFarlane needs to take a course in basic human empathy, but other than that (and we can’t underestimate the profound hugeness of that “that”), it’s pretty OK in my book.

TL;DR: Ted 2 is doltish and frequently offensive, but glimmers with occasionally pristine humor.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1076

Thinking Outside The Box

Year: 2010

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Thanks to Sergio’s ineffable commitment to attempting to make me a more culturally fluent person, I have finally seen a David O. Russell film. My firm resistance has been plied by a series of ice cream cones, not far enough to get me to watch Silver Linings Playbook, but with enough resolve to get me in front of the director’s 2010 effort, the “based on a true story” boxing flick, The Fighter.

Or, should I say, “boring” flick. Zing! OK, the fact that I actually liked the film diminishes the effect of this joke, but I had it locked and loaded and I couldn’t resist.

The film tells the true story of the rise of boxing champ Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a down-on-his-luck boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts. He is tired of being a stepping stone for other, better boxers and longs to emerge from under the shadow of his older brother Dicky (Christian Bale), a careless tweaker who is still coasting on his knockout of Sugar Ray Leonard over a decade ago.

When Mickey gets together with the sexy, supportive bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), who encourages him to pursue training away from his current coach – Dicky – and his current manager – his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) – he struggles to choose between escaping his overbearing family who he believes might be crushing his last chance for a championship or staying with the people who have always loved him and stood by his side, albeit in their strange disjointed way.

I know which side I’d choose, but only because I honestly believe that Amy Adams could kick Christian Bale’s ass.

Usually, one’s enjoyment of this type of movie is entirely contingent on one’s appreciation of the sport at the center of it all. The reason for this is, with the exception of the modern masterpiece Cool Runnings, the vast majority of athletic competition films devote themselves to a pornishly detailed depiction of the intricacies of the game.

Yes, there are plots and characters, but they can only conjure fleeting emotions before being dragged back by the inevitable tide of dudes in shorts chucking balls at each other. It’s all very hetero-masculine and it’s utterly exhausting if you can’t muster enthusiasm for dudes in shorts chucking balls at each other.

Don’t get me wrong. Some of these films are terrific. And some of them are Space Jam. But I am not a part of their loud, nacho-swilling demographic. I bring this up because The Fighter spectacularly avoids these pitfalls, focusing almost exclusively on family drama and character study.

If you love sports and family dramas, you are a beautiful person and I envy your worldliness.

What is most surprising about The Fighter is that, sandwiched between the drama and the punching is a not inconsiderable vein of humor. This is largely provided by Micky’s mother and his sisters, a gaggle of loudmouthed Bostonians with hair like an SNL sketch about suburban moms. Without this, The Fighter would be a much flatter, more dour film. But as it stands, the humor elevates the film completely, allowing one to easily forget about its uninspiring technique, which only once aspires to do something new with the filmmaking tools at its disposal.

The moment I’m referring to is a doozy though, underscoring a frantic Dicky with the pounding of Micky’s boxing bag while he trains alone at a session that was supposed to be with the two of them. Beyond that, the filmmakers don’t attempt anything particularly ambitious (save for one moment that flirts with emphatic musicality and is soundly rejected), generally letting the dialogue and performances speak for themselves.

Luckily for everyone, this turns out to be enough. The Fighter is helmed by a quartet of admirable actors giving varied, but equally stable and committed performances. The best is probably Bale, who is up to his favorite trick of completely altering his body and wrecking his physique to inhabit Dicky’s body physically. But he doesn’t just stop there and coast, thankfully. His Dicky comes alive in a mélange of tics and infinitely shifting emotions, performed with the grace and precision of a master ballerina.

The other three performers don’t go the whole hog like Bale, but they show admirable verisimilitude in their willingness to perform in unflattering conditions, drenched in summer sweat, a picture of grubby “real America.” Melissa Leo shines as the film’s tonal switchboard, effortlessly balancing and rerouting the drama and humor in perfect proportions, Amy Adams plays against type, reveling in a character that’s rough-and-tumble, fiery, and aggressively loyal, and Mark Wahlberg is Mark Wahlberg.

Hi.

Wahlberg turns in an utterly adequate performance, as he rarely fails to do when allowed to use his native accent, but he just can’t compete with the high caliber talent that outshines his more fundamental acting style.

So that’s The Fighter in a nutshell. A sports film with unusual tendencies, solid talent, and unremarkable atmosphere. It doesn’t stand out amidst the roar of Oscarbait cinema, but neither does it sink into the much. It’s uniquely fun for a film of its stock (there’s a little nerd pun for ya, you’re welcome), and it’s worth a look, as long as you’re a fan of Amy Adams and punching.

TL;DR: The Fighter is a remarkably funny and rewarding sports film.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 906