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We've Outgrown This Teddy Bear

Everyone's favorite pot smoking, beer drinking, foul-mouthed teddy bear is back in "Ted 2". It's too bad he comes with a major case of the sequels.

I absolutely loved the first "Ted", which came out in 2012. It has some of the biggest laughs of any movie I've seen in quite some time (it even found a spot on my Top 10 of that year). Of course, there was a novelty to the idea of a deranged teddy bear that came to life, and writer and director Seth MacFarlane found a really sharp and hilarious voice in bringing Ted to life (he voices the bear). The surprise hit was bound to spawn a sequel and it's finally here, for better or for worse.

It's not that "Ted 2" is aggressively terrible or even unfunny. The first act of the film produces the majority of the film's laughs, but the movie derails in a big way in the last two acts. The snappy and fun energy comes to a screeching halt and the rest of the movie turns out to be a real drag. MacFarlane - returning as writer, director and the voice of Ted - tries to make "Ted 2" something substantial, serious and important and it never really works.

As the film opens, Ted is marrying his girlfriend, Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). He has his best friend, John (Mark Wahlberg), by his side, who is still coping with his divorce (Mila Kunis didn't come back for the sequel). Ted and Tami-Lynn's marriage is on the rocks almost immediately and they decide the best way to save their marraige is to have a kid. Being a teddy bear, Ted needs a little help and looks to his buddy John to donate sperm so he and Tami-Lynn can have their baby. Awww.

Things get tricky when Ted finds out that legally he is not a person and therefore cannot be a parent. He is recognized as property, so John and Ted enlist the help of a young lawyer, Samantha (Amanda Seyfried), to take their case. "Ted 2" spends a bit too much time in the courtroom scenes arguing Ted's civil rights and that he is fit to be a parent. It really bogs the entire movie down.

No one wanted "Ted 2" to be good more than I did but MacFarlane has given us a film comprised of sporadic jokes that work and far too many that don't. He pumps his screenplay full of non-sequiturs and jokes with no punchlines, which is what killed his last film, "A Million Ways to Die in the West". All of this really makes "Ted 2" more frustrating than actually awful.

Adding to the frustration is the film's runtime. Just shy of two hours, "Ted 2" starts to show signs of straining well before the end of the movie. There are needless sub-plots - including Giovanni Ribisi returning as his creepy character from the first film - which extend the running time past what it needs to be. If MacFarlane had the sense to keep the movie at 90 minutes, we may have had something that worked a bit better.

Though I would never call myself a MacFarlane fan, there is no denying his talents as an entertainer. "Ted" was his first venture into feature films and he made what remains as one of the funniest films of the last five years. It's just a shame that he has yet to prove that it wasn't a fluke.