From the beginning of Ted, writer / director Seth MacFarlane blends fairy tale and nostalgia into one film. MacFarlane-as-baritone narrator indicts the people of world for no longer believing that wishes come true. As if channeling the virtues of Jiminy Cricket, the narrator brings us into a wintery landscaped-Massachusetts, on Christmas Eve, “that time of year when Boston boys gather to beat up the Jewish kid.” And as he gets beaten up, he finds time to tell the young John Bennett to “go away.” And so he does and wakes up on Christmas morning to a pile of gifts, including one adorable teddy bear with a mechanically saccharine voice that squeakily asserts “I love you,” or “you’re my best friend.” Isolated and without a friend in the city of Boston, John wishes for his teddy bear to come to life so that they can be “best friends forever.” In the morning, John wakes to the newly anthropomorphized teddy bear, and an expository montage begins.
They play; they bond; they become “thunder buddies” that comfort each other during storms; they grow up; they party; they smoke pot; they drink. This montage normalizes Ted, something that prevents the movie from devolving into a film that plays on the shock and awe of a living teddy bear. Once Ted comes to life, the media exploits his tale and he becomes a minor celebrity, appearing on Johnny Carson and giving random interviews. As a child celebrity, Ted also falls precipitously when he gets busted for smuggling narcotics through airport security. These two brief clips go beyond eliciting laughter; they also universalize the knowledge of the bear. Just as Brian, the talking dog in Family Guy, is a socially accepted presence, so is Ted, which makes the film more about maturity and responsibility than about the novelty of a foul-mouthed teddy bear.
As a grown up, John Bennett works in an Enterprise-Rent-a-Car looking establishment, primed to inherit the manager’s position – a cushy $35,000 a year position. Biding his time, John smokes bags of pot with Ted and wakes up to a cocktail of Cap’n Cruch and beer. At the same time, his girlfriend-of-four-years, Lori (Mila Kunis), is a Vice President of marketing for some firm run by the smarmy, condescending, philanderer Rex (Joel McHale). The tension building between Lori and John centers on his irresponsibility in the face of her success; though MacFarlane carefully structures the screenplay so that the conflict is not solely “he’s lazy, I’m successful.” Rather, there’s an earnest connection between John and Lori. He makes her laugh, “he has a huge heart,” she’s adorable, and “he’s the hottest guy in Boston.” Most importantly, John provides Lori with a minor connection to an irresponsible youth. He becomes her escape. Her job is intense; her boss is a pig; her boyfriend provides the levity. However, the problem foreseeably arises when John’s immaturity seeps from his time on the couch into her career. Whereas she accepts his penchant for an early-morning beer or the regularly toked join, he refuses to treat her obligations with respect and maturity – most often blaming Ted for his transgressions.
And this is where Ted goes (a little bit) deeper than crudity and vulgarity. MacFarlane, much like in the way he utilizes Stewie in Family Guy or Roger in American Dad, uses Ted to criticize the American male’s perpetual adolescence and regressive obliviousness – a phenomena that requires shirking responsibility and his eventual devolution to pot-smoking phone jockey. The only male within Ted who has achieved a modicum of success is Rex, and this is through nepotism. He’s wealthy and successful, but both were inherited through his father’s passing. Aside from his ostensible success, all male figures are either irresponsible, psychotic, or sociopaths. Ted and John are equivalent to juvenile delinquents. John’s boss, Thomas (Matt Walsh) seems alright – though a bit delusional in his praise of $35,000 a year salary – but we find out at the end that he’s kidnapped Tom Skerritt’s daughter. John and Ted’s hero, Flash Gordon, turns out to be a coked-out alcoholic whose face evinces a dozen-or-so plastic surgeries. John’s co-worker Guy (Patrick Warburton) is a temporarily closeted homosexual whose nights are comprised of blacking out, sending provocative texts, and waking up with his face bruised.
In contrast, Lori’s success is mirrored by the peripheral women in the film, though she’s still subjugated by her male boss. Here, MacFarlane offers in illustration of the ironic gender hierarchy. In the last thirty years, women have achieved greater success in academics, and in the last four years, women have held employment, while the majority of those who have been laid off are men. At the same time, those in a position of management still tend to be men, something exemplified by Rex and Frank (Bill Smetrovich), Ted’s boss at the grocery store. Despite Ted’s mock confession that the odor of Frank’s wife’s vagina in his mouth, his transgressions on the produce in the stock room, and his suggested use of a parsnip that he sold to the customers, Ted is hired, promoted, and then promoted again.
Overall, Ted is raunchy, crude, endearing, and, at times, hilarious; however, MacFarlane often employs a familiar tactic to elicit laughs: unnecessary sarcasm and illogical pop-culture castigations of 9/11, Katy Perry, Chris Brown, Channing Tatum, etc. There’s certainly nothing wrong with taking shots at these celebrities / events or anything else – as Carlin asserts, “even rape can be funny” – but the jokes are rather tangential and have little or nothing to do with the events on screen. Most often, they distract from the narrative and make us wonder whether their purpose it to stretch a cute, clever premise into a 106 minute movie.
