Ted (2012)

I Hear the Fat Kid Running.  I Bet It’s Hilarious.

Though I wasn’t able to get the triple feature I was hoping to when I went to see Spider-Man, a double feature was within my abilities.  It required that I first wait outside in the scorching Las Vegas summer temperatures for an hour, but it had the potential to be worth it.  If nothing else, it would make for a review.  And a request, as this movie was requested by my cousin Jeremy.  This movie caused many strange feelings for me, mainly because I didn’t feel like I wanted to see it.  This was strange because I love the guy that wrote and directed it and I’ve been a fan of his TV show for quite some time.  Yet, when he brought out a movie, I looked at the trailer and turned my nose up at it.  When it came out, I had been told by numerous people that it was worth seeing, but I could not be swayed.  Apparently, they all forgot that I review movies and take requests, and that requesting it might actually make me go see it.  Well my cousin didn’t forget as stupidity does not run in our bloodline … at least not on the male side.  And so I bring my review of Ted, written, directed by, and starring Seth MacFarlane, and also starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Giovanni Ribisi, Aedin Mincks, Patrick Stewart, Joel McHale, Matt Walsh, Patrick Warburton, Ralph Garman, Alex Borstein, Jessica Barth, Norah Jones, Sam J. Jones, Ryan Reynolds, and Tom Skerritt.

Young John Bennett has no friends.  For Christmas, he gets a large teddy bear that he cleverly names Ted.  But its limited vocabulary is not enough for John, so he wishes that Ted would learn how to talk.  Miraculously, his wish comes true and Ted comes to life.  After his parents (Alex Borstein and Ralph Garman) get over their initial shock, they take part in making Ted a brief celebrity.  In 2012, Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) has lost his celebrity and now lives with John (Mark Wahlberg) and his girlfriend of four years, Lori (Mila Kunis).  Over their anniversary dinner, John comes to realize that Lori was hoping he would propose, but doesn’t want to marry a 35-year-old who hangs out and smokes weed with his teddy bear.  Lori doesn’t want to lay down a him-or-me ultimatum, but it may come to that anyway.  Also in the mix is Lori’s boss, Rex (Joel McHale), who really wants to bang her and a crazed stalker named Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) and his son Robert (Aedin Mincks) who want to kidnap Ted.

I still can’t really put into words why I didn’t find myself interested in this movie, but I’m very happy that I finally relented to seeing it.  It’s not the greatest comedy ever (but it does reference the greatest comedy ever, in my opinion), but it’s a solid movie with lots of laughs throughout.  I don’t know why I didn’t expect it, being such a fan of the Family Guy and American Dad as I am, but it’s always nice to be surprised.  A lot of the humor is not far removed from what you’d see in a typical episode of Family Guy or American Dad, but they never do any of the flashback or cutaway jokes that people have complained about in Family Guy.  It’s just straight up funniness.  And a lot of it is nerdy jokes, which I always appreciate.  They recreate the dance scene from Airplane! for crying out loud!  Any movie that does that is alright in my book.  I got confused by one nerdy joke in the movie though, when it was revealed that Lori’s ringtone on John’s phone was the Imperial Death March.  What’s wrong with that?  That’s the ringtone I use for my mom on my phone.  (That is not a joke).  There’s also a scene where Ted and John do coke at a party, and that scene is all the way hilarious.  How does that count as a nerdy joke?  ‘Cause fuckin’ Flash Gordon (the real one!) is in that whole scene.  There may have been jokes that were lost on me in this scene as I have never seen Flash Gordon, but I think I got the gist of it.  I didn’t understand how this party was the straw that broke the camels back for Lori in their relationship though.  How are you going to get mad at your guy for going to that party?  Does he often get to hang out with his childhood heroes?  I understand you were reaching the end of your rope with the guy, but you have to let that one go.  There were some pretty sweet fights in the movie as well.  There was one near the end of the movie that reminded me of the fight from the third Bourne movie, but slightly different because one half of it was a teddy bear and not a big black guy.  There’s also a point where a kid gets punched in the face, and that’s just delicious.

The performances in this movie are all alright by me.  I’ve never really been too big of a fan of Mark Wahlberg, but I liked him in this movie.  He was funny in the movie, and there were even parts where he was downright cute, like when he was cowering in the kitchen yelling at Lori as she tried to clean up hooker poop.  Mila Kunis was very cute in the movie, and you felt for her very frequently in the movie.  But she’s always cute.  She probably can’t help it.  And at least she wasn’t Meg, am I right?  Seth MacFarlane brought a great deal of the comedy to the movie as Ted, and he brought even more to it as the writer of the movie.  You could expect that when looking at the trailers for the movie, but MacFarlane does share the funny pretty evenly with the rest of the cast.  I had gotten myself all smug and self-satisfied to say that Ted’s voice occasionally goes into Peter Griffin territory, but then they made the joke and made me look like a real dick-hole.  One of my favorite parts for Ted was a smaller moment in the movie, but it was when he was interviewing for his job, or pretty much all of his interactions with his boss.  Giovanni Ribisi was also in this movie, and he was as creepy as he was funny.  Norah Jones is also in the movie, but all I can say about her is that a Norah Jones concert looks like a boring time.  Not because of the music, but because the audience just seems to stand there and sway back and forth.  Where’s the mosh pit?  I had also heard that Ryan Reynolds was in this movie in a small part, but even that feels like an understatement.  He might as well have just wondered by in the background and waved.

I had inexplicably low expectations for Ted going in, but it blew them out of the water.  Turns out Seth MacFarlane can make funny in various different scenarios.  The movie is often laugh out loud funny, amusing the rest of the time, and even manages a good deal of emotional scenes.  Though I’d say the ending was not unexpected, it was the enjoyable way to end the movie.  The performances all help the movie along to their inevitable goal of being a fun and enjoyable movie.  This movie is definitely worth a watch in the theaters, so go do it.  Ted gets “Look what Jesus did!” out of “Somewhere out there are four terrible fathers I wish I could thank for this great night.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

What’s Your Number? (2011)

Are You Going to Rape and Kill Me Later?

The only inspiration I had for watching today’s movie was my love of the main actress in it.  I know I’ve said that I was in love with probably 20 actresses by now, but I like to keep my options open.  And that’s kind of what today’s movie is about.  I knew the basic premise of today’s movie and knew that it was a comedy, but was mainly drawn to the movie by the star.  I’m sure there was a point when it was available on RedBox, but I found the movie on Netflix and got the disc sent to me.  So let’s check in with What’s Your Number?, written by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden, directed by Mark Mylod, and starring Anna Faris, Chris Evans, Ari Graynor, Blythe Danner, Ed Begley Jr., Heather Burns, Eliza Coupe, Kate Simses, Tika Sumpter, Dave Annable, Joel McHale, Chris Pratt, Zachary Quinto, Martin Freeman, Andy Samberg, Thomas Lennon, Anthony Mackie, Mike Vogel, and Aziz Ansari.

Ally Darling (Anna Faris) makes the mistake of reading an article that says that the average number of sexual relationships a woman has is 10.5.  Ally has had 19.  Finding that her number is so much higher than all of the people she knows, and the article saying that women that are too sexually available never find a husband, Ally resolves to not have sex again until she’s found her husband.  It goes great for her … for all of a few hours, when she gets really drunk at her sisters bachelorette party and sleeps with her ex-boss Roger (Joel McHale).  Having reached 20, and having no desire to stay with the ball scratcher/finger sniffer Roger, Ally decides that her only solution is to find all of the other 19 guys she’s slept with to determine if they are better prospects since the last time they were in her.  She enlists the help of her neighbor, Colin (Chris Evans), and gets started on some poor decision making.

I was vaguely fond of this movie, but probably not for many reasons you’ll find in this paragraph.  The story didn’t really connect with me.  It seemed like some chick read an article in Marie Claire, got pissed because it made her look like a whore, and then decided to make a movie that vindicated her.  I don’t know if 10 is the actual number or not, but if someone is worried about how guys will feel about their number then they should probably be more discerning with their vagina.  I can’t speak for all guys, but I’d say that I personally wouldn’t care that much about what a girl’s number was as long as she didn’t have a kid or any other venereal diseases.  Most of Ally’s reactions to her predicament annoyed me with how little they made sense.  Her first reaction is to get sloppy drunk at a bar.  Yeah, ‘cause no one’s ever slept with someone under those circumstances.  Well, Ally was able to be the first person to do it, ruining her number and leaving her in the situation where she made her next poor decision to try to find old boyfriends.  As they pointed out in the movie, you probably left those guys for a reason.  Also, if you tell a guy that you had sex with 20 guys, his reaction will probably not be much different than telling him you had 21.  So, instead of locking your vag and looking through your old black book, do what you should have been doing already and hold out on the sex until you like a guy.  But that probably wouldn’t have made much of a movie premise, so we let it slide so long as they make a funny movie.  They never really manage to pull that off either.  I would say that this movie finishes as “cute”, but the actual laughs in the movie are few and far between.  They try often enough, but I’d say the movie only managed about three laughs out of me.  I appreciated that Ally realized, as she was climbing a wall to get to someone, that she probably should’ve just waited for him at his apartment.  It was what I was thinking at that point and it got a laugh out of me that they pointed out that it didn’t make that much sense.  The movie also follows a pretty basic romantic comedy pattern, but it does it so slowly that the lack of some real funniness leaves you wishing they would just get to the conclusion that you know they’re heading towards already.  Another thing that I’m pretty sure I’ve noticed in other romantic comedies is that they always pick the strangest little hobbies for the main character to enjoy and somehow find employment from.  I remember in Bridesmaids that Kristen Wiig’s character loved to make cupcakes.  In this movie, Ally strangely loves to make creepy little dioramas that Mr. Right tells her she should do for a living.  Why can’t they ever do something normal and more typical with their time, like writing reviews in all of their free time?

I think the performances are what charmed me the most in this movie.  I’ve been a big fan of Anna Faris since the first time I saw her.  Not only do I find her gorgeous, but she’s typically very funny in all of the movies she’s in.  She’s never really been given the opportunity to participate in a really good comedy, and I have no idea why.  I think she’s got great comedic timing and tends to bring it to all of her movies.  In this movie, she did what she could with material that was spotty at best.  The real thing she brought for me was intense hotness and being almost naked numerous times in the movie.  And what’s more is that I feel the exact same bunch of stuff can be said for Chris Evans.  He’s really good looking, he was nearly naked a lot in this movie, and he’s a pretty good comedic actor.  He’s had much better luck in his career than Anna Faris has, but mostly with action flicks.  Though he was the comic relief in Losers and the Fantastic Four movies, the only actual comedy I’ve seen him in before this was Not Another Teen Movie, but he was pretty funny in that.  I liked Ari Graynor as well, though the only thing that sticks with me that she did was that I liked her vows at her wedding.  I also found the crew that they got as representatives of the 20 guys Ally had sex with were interesting.  The majority of them were pretty big actors that just popped in for a scene.  People like Joel McHale, Zachary Quinto, Martin Freeman, Andy Samberg, Thomas Lennon, Anthony Mackie, the voice of Aziz Ansari, and Anna Faris’ real life husband Chris Pratt.

What’s Your Number? manages to make up for what it’s missing in quality writing and comedy with its two main actors.  It’s got a couple of solid laughs in the movie, but they’re too far spread out and left me just wanting them to cut to the chase and reach the conclusion that you can see coming from about 20 minutes in.  If you’re in the market for a romantic comedy, you could do much worse than this one and it’s at least worth a watch.  If you’ve no interest in a romantic comedy, then you have no real reason to pay this movie any mind.  What’s Your Number? gets “I know that I’m not perfect, but I wanna be with somebody who appreciates me” out of “How’s your blow job?”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.