#45 TED 2

#45 TED 2

Starring: Mark Whalberg, Todd Macfarlane, Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, John Slattery, Jessica Barth and Morgan Freeman. Written by Todd Macfarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild. Directed by Todd Macfarlane. 115 minutes long.

Good news and bad news. Good news first. Terminator Genysis, or Turd-menator Genypiss as I like to call it, you are no longer the worst film of the summer. Bad news, sadly Ted 2 is. Yes siree, the worst film of the summer has arrived, a tired, boring, mean-spirited film filled with very little, apart from broad humour, most of which is front ended. 

The story, for there is one, just. Ted gets married, has marital problems decides to have a child, tries to find a sperm donor, then discovers his wife is sterile, because she's destroyed her reproductive system with too many drugs. Tries to adopt but is rejected because both he and his wife have convictions for drugs. Then discovers he has no civil rights, loses his job, has his marriage annulled by the state, hires a stoner lawyer to win him his civil rights but is declared legally to be property. And so tries to convince a top human rights lawyer to defend him in a court of law. Meanwhile a psychotic man kidnaps Ted and tries to murder him with the help of the CEO of Hasbro.

In between that barrel of comedy gold the following happens, but not necessarily in this order.

Jokes about black-men, jokes about their penises, other dick jokes, jokes about pedophilia, jokes about porn, jokes about smoking pot, doing drugs, jokes about nerds, jokes about sex, jokes about dick-shaped bongs, sperm donors and marital abuse. Then there's the aggressive physical comedy against nerds at New York Comic Con, where a line of innocent young men are physically bullied for no apparent reason.

This isn't a funny film, but don't get me wrong, you will laugh, but not with it, but in spite of it, and mostly because you can't quite believe they've done that joke, that said there are some, just not many, laugh out loud funny bits. Trouble is, in between is mainly just the three main leads smoking pot, over and over again. 

Whereas the first Ted film was fresh and funny whose only fault was to have a plot which was entirely unnecessary, this tired, been there, done that, sequel is just more of the same. Hats off to both Whalberg and Seyfried who make the best of a shit script and to Seyfried who is the butt of several very mean-spirited jokes. In fact, mean spirited sums this film up perfectly.

This seems to start well and the opening credit homage to the Zeigfield dancing films of the 30s is glorious, but after the 'One year later' caption card, things start to roll down hill pretty fast, until by the end of it you'll gasping as the, what seems genuinely desperate ending.

So, with a hit rate of 1 to 3 Macfarlane is going to have to pull something pretty spectacular out of the bag next time round before he's used up all his credit at the Hollywood bank.

3/10