Ted
is a hilarious 10-minute sketch crammed into an excruciating
106-minute movie.
Here's the sketch:
a lonely boy wishes that his teddy bear would come to life and be his
best friend forever. The wish comes true and the boy and his bear
grow into two lazy, irresponsible, couch-bound weed monkeys. The
bear says and does lots of vulgar stuff, which is funny coming from a
teddy bear. That's about it.
This makes for an
amusing first act. Mark Wahlberg is game for just about anything as
the grown-up slacker, and the animators who created the bear do
phenomenal work. The joke wears thin by the second act, however. By
the third, we're checking our watches and wondering if we have any
socks that need folding.
What's bad about
it? First, Wahlberg is horribly miscast as the aforementioned
couch-bound weed monkey. While he's a fine actor who's willing to
work for a laugh, the fact is that he looks like a bodybuilder. I
submit that it's impossible to be both a lazy, irresponsible,
couch-bound weed monkey and a bodybuilder. Bodybuilding requires
dedication, discipline, and a work ethic. Every time the movie
showed me Wahlberg's character sprawled out on the couch, with a beer
to one hand and a bong to the other, all I could think was,
“Shenanigans. This guy looks like he spends his time drinking
protein shakes and doing hammer curls. I'm just not buying it.”
And the love
interest? I felt actively sorry for Mila Kunis in this picture. Not
only was she trying to play a character wholly in love with an
unlovable man, she looked so thin that I wanted to shout, “Hey,
Wahlberg, how about sharing one of your protein shakes with this poor
woman? She looks like she's about to collapse!”
