Ted

A comedy set in Boston. John has no friends as a child. He wishes at Christmas that the teddy bear he was given would come alive. In the morning the bear speaks. It becomes news, the bear appears on television, and is famous for a while. Twenty-seven years later they are still together. John is thirty-five, works at a car rental company, and sits drinking with the bear in the evening. Lori has been with him four years and now wants the bear out of the house. From there the film is a story about choosing. Renting a flat, a job, a party and an abduction. What the narrative is interested in is not magic but the refusal to grow up: the film uses a talking bear as the physical form of a group of friends. The humour is hard. Drugs, sex and period references throughout; the narrative sets a high certificate from the start. An admiration for a film of the 1980s runs through the narrative, and that film's lead actor appears as himself. The bear was made by computer and its movement came from the director's own capture; he did the voice as well. It was the director's first feature and he came from television; the tone of the humour is familiar from there. The film was made on what counts as a low budget and took far more than that worldwide. Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Seth MacFarlane, Joel McHale and Giovanni Ribisi are in the cast. Seth MacFarlane directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes crude comedy. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot carry some of the jokes now; several sections plainly show their age.