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88The surprise of Ted is that it goes for honest Spielbergian wonder, too, and even earns some tears.
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88Ted is really a rather sweet examination of loyalty, friendship, and love. Wahlberg and Kunis are charming together (though not exactly in a Cary Grant / Audrey Hepburn kind of way), and both manage to play this thing - at least the challenges-of-a-serious-relationship part of this thing - straight.
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88The funniest movie character so far this year is a stuffed teddy bear. And the best comedy screenplay so far is Ted, the saga of the bear's friendship with a 35-year-old manchild.
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83It's often convulsively funny.
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Jul 23, 201280A fabulous first live-action effort, combining R-rated hilarity with skilled storytelling as it slips some real heart into the stuffing of a toy bear.
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80In a universe of Hollywood comedies that seem determined to insult the audience and pander to the basest form of post-adolescent fantasy, Ted feels almost sophisticated.
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80Ted runs out of invention in its last act (the bear is coveted by a chillingly deadpan sociopath, played by Giovanni Ribisi, and the villain's fat son), but I can't think of a better movie to see if you're male and want to get high and relive your idiot adolescence.
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80MacFarlane gets an impressive amount of comic mileage from having a plush toy talk like a Boston low-life, though for gut laughs nothing compares to the brutal, frantic, and completely wordless fight scene between Wahlberg and his little buddy in a cheap hotel room.
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80This is no-holds-barred humor of the finest, grossest kind, centered around the theme of arrested development.
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80Movies don't get much funnier than Ted.
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80Not too many films serve up laughs that just keep on rolling with regularity from beginning to end, but Seth MacFarlane's directorial debut does so and without any feeling of strain.
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75Ted may not be profound or deft, but when it hits the sweet-sour spot, which it does regularly, it can win you over.
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75Ted is essentially a one-joke movie. Okay, it's a very funny joke, but it's still only one joke.
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75A crass, foul-mouthed, mostly hilarious, surprisingly sentimental bromance.
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75One of the tricks of Ted -- perhaps its smartest one -- is that everyone, not just John, knows the bear can talk.
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75It's hysterically, gut-bustingly funny.
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75Ted is never stronger than when Wahlberg and MacFarlane's Ted hang out, riff, and luxuriate in an easy friendship, but as it lurches to a conclusion, Ted unwisely devotes far too much of its time to a plot it would be better off ignoring.
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75Most of Ted eludes description, analysis and explanation. You just have to hold onto your own certifiable sense of humor and let Mr. MacFarlane take you where he wants to go. Then get out of the way and enjoy it.
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70The comic targets run the gamut - race, religion, relationships, reality, etc. While nothing is sacred, the sacrilege comes with just enough sweetness to offset the salt.
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Jun 28, 201263As unabashedly idiotic movie comedies go, Ted goes fairly well.
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63This bromance with rapid-fire quips, however, is undermined by unoriginal scenarios and a long, drawn-out chase scene.
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60Unapologetically raw -- and very funny.
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60True chemistry is hard to find. And by some stroke of movie magic - or sheer skill - Wahlberg and the bear make a pretty great team.
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60MacFarlane may need to jettison his adolescent belief that cramming every moment with two winks and a zinger exponentially ups the gutbusting, however, before he can hit his real artistic stride.
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58And yet. And yet, Gawd help me, the always surprising Mark Wahlberg throws himself into his thespian adventure with such radiant wacko energy, so full of Boston beans, that Ted is also kind of, well, impressively nuts.
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50For all of its transgressive plush-toy sex and screw-'em humor, the plot is pretty standard stuff.
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50You can find this clever, or you can find it lazy, and this is why MacFarlane is the biggest mixed blessing in contemporary TV comedy: He is both.
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50Ted is more of an idea than a movie, a string of jokes and homages starring a cartoon and some game actors whose performances are destined to be enjoyed in chunks, rarely from start to finish, during momentary breaks of channel surfing on late-night TV.
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50So what's not to love? For starters, there's the inescapable fact that Ted is, no matter how you stuff it, yet another man-child buddy movie – and all that that implies.
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50The one-note joke plays out longer and better than you might expect, at least for a while. But not forever.
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Jun 23, 201250A predictably irreverent satire that's sweeter and, sadly, less funny than you might expect.
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40Ted is often hilarious, sometimes sweet and, in the spirit of "Family Guy," consistently raunchy. Yet it's seriously overextended and, as the premise wears ever thinner, frantically overproduced.
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40The sin of Ted is not that it is offensive but that it is boring, lazy and wildly unoriginal. If Triumph the Insult Comic Dog ever got a hold of Ted, there would be nothing left but a pile of fluff and a few scraps of fur.
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40It's dispiriting enough to witness Kunis still waiting for a comic lead role worthy of her. But the usually nimble Wahlberg - who at least has one great moment rattling off "white-trash girls' names" - suffers the most, playing second fiddle to a knee-high Gund knockoff.
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38Ted does not only break before it ends. It snaps back so violently that it very well may knock out of your mind any recollection that the movie is fairly entertaining for about 30 minutes.
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38Eventually MacFarlane's formula -- consisting of filthy, ethnically offensive jokes, scatological humor, tacky pop culture references and random cameos -- begins to wear thin.
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25Seth MacFarlane's comedic modus operandi is to shock with outrageousness and pander with TV and movie citations via one non sequitur after another, a strategy that leads to a few laughs but nothing approaching lasting humor.