The thunder buddies are back!

In ted 2, John (Mark Wahlberg - Entourage) and Ted, voiced by Seth MacFarlane (A Million Ways To Die In The West / Family Guy) are re-united on the couch with their brewskis, smoking bongs and watching teddy porn. This is so not a film for kiddies! However, if you enjoyed the original ted movie then you are in for another completely politically incorrect couple of hours of fun. It doesn’t all work - some of the jokes are particularly USA-centric - but there is enough gross humour to keep you grinning (and occasionally groaning), if you are prepared to go for the ride with this furry bad boy and his sidekick.

At the end of the first film, Ted married his gum-chewing, checkout chick, gal-pal Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth – Family Guy). In ted 2, their marriage has hit rock bottom as banality has overtaken domesticity and Ted, while wading through a pile of bills, accuses his wife of spending too much money on clothes. Back at work, a colleague suggests that they have a baby because it is the only thing that will keep them together. Of course, they’ll need assistance if Tami-Lynn is going to get in ‘the family way’ due to a certain anatomical deficiency in Ted! He initially asks his hero Sam Jones (Sam J. Jones), aka ‘Flash Gordon,’ to donate his sperm but Sam declines as his count had been mightily reduced by his super-hero sized drug abuse and he only has one sperm left. Undeterred, Ted asks, “Well couldn’t I have that one?”

After another failed attempt to get the goods, this time from NFL quarterback Tom Brady (playing himself), John offers to donate some of his seed but, in an hilarious scene, the plan goes very messily wrong at the sperm bank. The next step is to try and adopt but this raises unforeseen issues about Ted’s legal status and he has to take his case to court. He and John engage novice lawyer Samantha (Amanda Seyfried – While We’re Young / Mamma Mia!) to establish his identity but, in an embarrassing moment during the hearing, the judge (Ron Canada – Boston Legal) asks Ted to press his chest and the words “I love you” come out, spoken in his high-pitched manufactured voice rather than his own. In the eyes of the law, this demonstrates he is just a stuffed toy and Ted is declared a ‘non-person.’

This gives the scriptwriters (MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild) the opportunity to take a more serious tack, at least momentarily. This is, after all, the ‘land of the free’ and Ted feels he should have the same rights as his fellow citizens. His is an old argument, one that harks back to pre-Civil War times, when African-American slaves were regarded as property in the eyes of the law. Then, in the midst of all this, just to complicate matters even more, Ted is stalked by his nemesis from the first movie, Donny (Giovanni Ribisi - Selma), and he’s bear-napped in the middle of the Big Apple Comic Con!

Seth MacFarlane, together with his co-writers, has developed a franchise that could go on forever. In his recent cameo performance in Entourage, Wahlberg quips that he could see it going as far as ted 23. That’s highly ambitious, however, time will tell. For now it’s fun to spend time with this foul-mouthed, jive-talking, wise-cracking bear. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to spend an evening with a living stuffed toy that has a quirky opinion on life, the universe and everything? Maybe he is ‘human’ after all. He certainly behaves badly enough to be one!

// SALT

Previewed at Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney, on 24 June 2015