Ted, review: Seth MacFarlane’s sweary Paddington has one joke – and it’s threadbare
Ted was a 2012 film about a talking teddy bear who, instead of being cute, smoked marijuana and made foul-mouthed jokes in a strong Bostonian accent. The comic premise was that he had come to life when his eight-year-old owner, John Bennett, wished upon a star, but now John was a 30-something man (played by Mark Wahlberg) doomed to spend all of his time with this stuffed toy.
The adventures of a sweary Paddington were reasonably funny back then. And a lot of people thought so – it grossed more than $500 m at the box office. Now, though? Dredged up by creator Seth MacFarlane eight years after a poorly received sequel, and turned into a TV series (Sky Max)? Not so much.
This is a prequel that nobody asked for, set in 1993 when John has reached his teenage years. Ted sets the scene in an introductory voice-over, saying that he was once a media sensation but “like every phenomenon, eventually nobody gives a s--t”. Which is exactly how you should feel about this series.
It’s a family sitcom, in which Ted lives with John (Max Burkholder), John’s parents Susan and Matty (Alanna Ubach and Scott Grimes), and cousin Blaire (Giorgia Whigham). It’s also something of an origin story, in that we see John and Ted get stoned for the first time. But the joke has worn so thin – Ted swears, insults people, makes gags about paedophile priests – that it just isn’t entertaining.
The action, if that’s what you can call it, moves between the family home and high school, where Ted reluctantly enrols when all he wants to do is stay at home, playing video games and watching TV.
In a doomed attempt to bring Ted up-to-date, MacFarlane has made Blaire a “woke” character who berates Uncle Matty for using racial stereotypes – Uncle Matty being a working-class Republican type. She calls him “a classic Boston racist”. He protests: “I’m not a racist, my favourite movie is Rocky. Apollo Creed is in the movie.” Aunt Susan then points out that Blaire can be racist too, because as a child she would practice haircuts on her black Barbies, before committing to styling her blonde Barbies’s hair.
“I was eight years old, I didn’t f---ing know any better,” says Blaire. For starters, did anyone talk like this in 1993? And for seconds – this dialogue is about as funny as the rest of the show.
