Ted

Hollywood have been struggling to add some freshness to their rom coms so this time they take help of a teddy bear who talks and make it a bad ass one who rattles off abuses like nobody's business and smokes weed all day.

John is a lonely child with no friends. One Christmas Eve he is gifted a teddy bear by his parents. A magical wish makes teddy talk. On growing up John( Mark Wahlberg) gets to date Lori (Mila Kunis) thanks to the confidence he got after being friends with Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) . But now at the age of 35 John has to choose between his best friend and his hot girl friend.

Seth MacFarlane writes directs and is the voice of ted. In short he rocks the show here. Some very funny writing makes this film rise above the ordinary. There is adult humour, fart jokes, throwback to Flash Gordon (whose reference we might not get here) and the hot Mila Kunis without any skin show (minus points for that)in case you get bored of watching the bromance between Mark Wahlberg and Ted.

The Giovanni Ribisi's track about him being obsessed about Ted and wanting to own it for his son is the only irritating part in the film. It jars with the comic tone of the film.

Word of mouth - Ted is wicked, abusive, and insanely funny. It will make you stay away from gifting a teddy bear to a child.

Rating - 3.5 (good)

Ticket meter - worth 200 bucks

Seth McFarlane, the man responsible for the animated phenomenon, 'Family Guy' finally gets a shot at a full blown movie and much like his television series, 'Ted' is a wild exercise in hit and miss in terms of the humour.

One Christmas night eight year old John Bennet wished for his teddy bear to be his best friend for life and voila thanks to some Disney style magic, the bear comes to life next morning. After some understandable confusion, Ted the teddy bear is accepted in the family and soon after hailed as a celebrity. The movie cuts to twenty years late and gone is the cuddly cute bear, replaced instead by a foul-mouthed, pot smoking, womanising, cuddly cute bear, Ted (voice of Seth McFarlane) still best friends with John (Mark Wahlberg). John's been trying to get his life together but can't resist wasting time with Ted partying and generally having a good time much to the chagrin of Lori (Mila Kunis), John's girlfriend who after 4 years of the relationship is now waiting for John to wise up and pop the question. Thus begins the tug of war for John between his best friend of twenty years and his girlfriend; whom does Ted chose? Added to the mix is a psychopathic fan of Ted's, Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) who might have sinister plans for Ted.

The movie reeks of the late 80s and early 90s style kiddie sentimentality and this is a good thing that gives the movie a touch of authentic nostalgia which actually keeps it afloat even when the humour quotient can't. The cinematography throughout the movie seems to conveys the emotion of the scene quite effectively, something rare for a film like this.

Mark Wahlberg is his usual self, a better actor would have helped. Community's Joel McHale plays the sleaze-ball boss trying to hit on Lori and he is getting typecast fast; looks like he needs to fire his agent soon or there is no crawling out of this bottomless pit. Giovanni Ribisi plays to his strengths ands comes off as suitably creepy. Mila Kunis lets her astoundingly beautiful large eyes do most of the acting for her. The real star of the show however is Seth McFarlane with his spot on voice-over work.

The trailer might lead you to believe 'Ted' is funnier than it really is but give it a chance and it won't disappoint, and for those who remember your transformation years from carefree youth to responsibility oriented twenties, might find something to reminisce here. Definitely not the funniest film this year, but worth a one time watch.

For what it's worth, Ted is funniest film I've seen this year. It will most definitely be one of those comedies I would own that I keep popping into the player whenever I feel like lightening up. Director Seth MacFarlane (who is hosting the Oscars next year, I pray for the audience) references films like Airplane (1980) and Flash Gordon (1980). If you've seen them, you will like this kind of funny. If you haven't, I'm pretty sure you've seen Family Guy (which is MacFarlane's baby) and you'll definitely like this kind of funny.

The film is about John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) who owns a teddy bear that magically comes to life because of a simple childish wish. In essence, the film is about arrested development, specifically the Peter Pan syndrome wherein the boy never wants to grow up. We've seen several daft comedies with the primary characters suffering from this very crisis. But this film actually makes you care for its characters. Even during bizarre situations which seem amazingly implausible, it makes you suspend all disbelief and has so much fun doing it. There are scenes of melodrama at the end and those work too!

Mark Wahlberg is the king of spitfire dialogue. The scene where he literally machine-guns white trash names is flat-out awesome. Somebody cast him in a screwball comedy already! (Just don't remake His Girl Friday or Bringing Up Baby). Mila Kunis looks hot yet again. But the film belongs to the guy it should belong to: MacFarlane/ Ted.

Ted starts and ends with a voice-over narration by Patrick Stewart that had me in splits. There are some hilarious camera movements and tongue-in-cheek cutting (How can film technique be funny? I know right!). A film that makes you write a sentence like that has surely done its comedic homework really well. But let me elucidate: During the conversation with Ted and John while they are on coke, there are swish pans which make the situation more hectic. The dramatic swish zooms when John is heading to a party to meet his childhood idol. You know? Those. The fact that his childhood idol is Sam J. Jones also says a lot about this film. The fact that the films embraces this with open arms makes it shed off all pretentions, which in turn, makes you open yours and give it a bear hug.

If I have to pick one, just one scene that made me laugh so hard that it scared off the people around me, it would be the fight scene. This is by far the best best-friends fighting scene in the history of art. I have never been a fan of dirty humor and trash talking but this is something special. This is as dirty, witty, bromantic and laugh-out-loud funny as any film this year can get.