Release Date: June 26, 2015
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Seth MacFarlane (voice), Amanda Seyfried, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Patrick Warburton, Jessica Barth.
Director: Seth MacFarlane
Pre-Trailer Thoughts: The first Ted was a surprise in that it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, just a serviceable if often too crude comedy from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. Mark Wahlberg proved himself to be a fine comedic actor, and MacFarlane’s voice-work as Ted was especially great. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t hold up that well on repeated viewings, and in the intervening years between Ted and Ted 2 Macfarlane went and made A Million Ways to Die in the West, which actually was the worst thing in the world. As of now, hopes for Ted 2 are not high at all. -JTM
Pre-Trailer Thoughts: The first Ted was really awesome. Like Justin I had low expectations going into it, and I have to say I was absolutely floored at how funny it was. The Sam Jones stuff was classic. I will disagree with the repeat viewings – the comedy still holds up. Sure the Giovanni Ribsi stuff is crap, and the romantic strife between Wahlberg and Mila Kunis is trite, but the jokes hold up. That being said, why is there a sequel? Second, why is there no Mila Kunis? Third, why replace her with Amanda Seyfried who really has no charisma or comedic timing. If you mention Mean Girls to me — that was over a decade ago. -BB
Rate the Trailer: 3 out of 5. I laughed more at the trailer than I thought I would, although a large part of that is the over-exaggerated Boston accents that every other character seems to have. Whether or not you are a fan of his style of comedy, Macfarlane is undoubtedly a great voice actor when it comes to comic timing and that is on full display here. The trailer also gives a hint at the massive amount of cameos the film will have too, such as Tom Brady to Morgan Freeman. I’m hoping the movie will use those cameos as a fun exclamation point rather than just being a string of cameo after cameo in place of jokes.
Rate the Trailer: 2 out of 5. The only thing that really made me chuckle was the Tom Brady sequence. That’s where it ended though. It seems like there’s two wildly different stories here – Ted wants to impregnate his girlfriend, and Ted is trying to establish that he’s not property, he’s ‘real.’ God, both of those sound painful. -BB
Theater, Rent, Undecided, No Thanks: Undecided. Like the first film I’m surprised that I’m not actively hating this movie’s existence, but I’m still not sure if I’ll ever actually want to sit and watch it. I’m still fully expecting this to be a case where the trailer contains all the actually funny scenes in the movie while the rest of the film is nothing but duds, so for now I’m going to hold off on deciding to see this or not when some of the reviews start coming in. -JM
Theater, Rent, Undecided, No Thanks: Rent. I have a feeling this one’s going to be a whole lot of ‘meh’ followed by some pretty intense quasi-smirking. Yes, there will be a handful of good chuckles, but this’ll be a bland comedy. It’ll be worth a rental, but I’m not rushing to see this at all. -BB
Ted 2 hits theaters on June 26
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