A film about a teddy bear and his best friend masquerading itself as an original comedy turns out to be a rehash of Family Guy jokes. Not saying the movie isn't funny, it's just mostly gross-out humor and movie references. The 80's references are through the roof here. (Airplane, Top Gun, Indiana Jones, Flash Gordon, Pink Floyd: The Wall, Cheers, Aliens, etc.) The plot follows a young kid named John Bennett who is constantly teased and wishes for one friend. For Christmas he gets a teddy bear, which he names Ted, and wishes him to life. Ted is adored by the public, but after a few years nobody gives a shit that there's a talking stuffed animal, and Ted becomes a stoner and a slacker, who sort of drags John down. But when John gets into a relationship with a girl named Lori, he needs to choose between bromance or romance. Basically, it's very similar to a lot of buddy comedies and romantic comedies, but it's made funnier by an hilarious script, even if it's a bit scattered. Mark Wahlberg plays the main character, John, who just wants to be a good boyfriend and worker, which is hard with an irresponsible friend around. Mila Kunis plays Lori, John's smart and way out-of-his-league girlfriend, who is getting tired of Ted's antics. Seth McFarlane gives great voice work and a motion capture performance as Ted, the alcoholic, weed-smoking, foul-mouthed and out-of-control living teddy bear. He basically does the Peter Griffin voice for this role, which they joke about in the film. Joel McHale plays Lori's asshole boss, Rex, who constantly hits on Lori and has insanely expensive collectibles in his house. (Including Lance Armstrong's cryogenically frozen testicle.) Patrick Warburton (voice of Joe on Family Guy) plays Guy, John's gay coworker, and Ryan Reynolds makes a cameo as his lover, Jared. Tom Skerritt and Nora Jones make cameos as themselves. Sam J. Jones, star of Flash Gordon, plays a coked-up, crazy version of himself in a supporting role. Giovanni Ribisi plays Donny, a freaky, stalker character who kidnaps Ted for his chubby, psycho kid. Seriously, these characters should actually star in a horror movie. Jessica Barth plays Tammy-Lynn, Ted's white-trash cashier girlfriend. Patrick Stewart voices the Narrator. The jokes in the film are funny, but seem way too much like Family Guy humor, with jokes that don't really relate to the plot, and are more of just references to other movies and shows. This movie is funny while you watch it, but you may find it sort of like a long episode of one of McFarlane's shows rather than an actual movie. Seth, if you're reading this, this movie was a good one, but I recommend if you do another one, follow in the footsteps of Mike Judge. Judge, who created Beavis and Butthead, went on to direct Office Space, a cult hit which redefined comedy, imagine if that movie was just a long episode of Beavis and Butthead. (A good point made by Spill.com) Overall, it's a good movie, just try something new next time. 3.5/5 stars. Note: This being a Universal movie, there are a lot of Universal movie posters around and in backgrounds.
Savages:
I was really looking forward to this film. The plot follows two weed-growers, Chon (a war vet) and Ben (a Buddhist), who both are in love with Ophelia, "O" for short, a free-spirited girl who is shared by the men. They refuse to join with the Baja Cartel, led by "Elena Le Reina", and "O" is kidnapped, and they are forced to join. They decide they need to fight back, using their ties to a crooked DEA agent to go on a revenge spree. The cast is pretty good. "O" is kindred spirit and a good soul, and Blake Lively fits that role. Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson are good as Chon and Ben respectively but are the just sort of there, just sort of carboard cut-out anti-heroes. Salma Hayek is the somewhat empathetic drug lord Elena Sanchez. Benicio del Toro is "Lado", Elena's enforcer, a sadistic, perverse, nasty, and brutal enforcer, torturer, executioner, and rapist. John Travolta plays Dennis, a corrupt federal agent, who is working with Lado to take over the cartel. Sandra Echeverria plays Magda, Elena's estranged daughter who Elena wants to bond with, who becomes entangled in the revenge plot. Demian Bichir plays Alex, the cartel's lawyer, who gets framd for trying to fuck over the cartel, and pays for it. This brings us to the violence. There's not as much action as the film promises, and the violence is brutal, but it doesn't come in often. When action does happen, it's intense, realistic, and graphic, but this rarely happens in the film. The run-time is ridiculous, at over 2 hours, and it's just boring. In films like Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers, the movie never dragged on or got boring because the characters and dialogue were so cool and entertaining that it distracted you away from the fact that the plot was going slowly. This film doesn't have that, and sort of drags on in some bits. They also over-use the word "savages" as if to remind you of the movie's title. I hate when movies do that. This is one of Oliver Stone's more mediocre films, not as good as his previous films, but bettwer than that Wall Street sequel. It's a good movie, but not as good as Killers, Platoon, JFK, or Born on Fourth of July. 3/5 stars. Note: There are a lot of classic Universal monster posters in the background, this being made during Universal's 100th anniversary.
Next: Batman marathon!
Editorial note (Dec. 1, 2012): This review does not necassarily reflect my opinions on these films now. I have a more fond outlook on them that i will talk about in my Top 2012 films list later on.
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