Ted 2

2.5 Stars (out of four)

So, this was a movie I really wanted to be good. To be able to buck the curse of the sequel or get "sequel-it's," was the hope.  Unfortunately, that is sort of what I got.

So, Ted 2 takes up where Ted left off.  Ted (Seth MacFarlane) is now happily married to Tammi-Lynn, but John (Mark Walberg) has divorced Laurie.  But when Ted and Tammi-Lynn try to adopt a baby, the state of Massachusetts declares that Ted is not a person, but property.  What follows is a legal quest that pits Ted, John and a young, idealistic lawyer Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) in a quixotic battle to prove that Ted is a person deserving legal rights.

So, I will first off lament the missing presence of Mila Kunis because a.) she's incredibly hot, b.) she has some very highly tuned acting chops between That 70's Show and Family Guy (where she works with writer/director/producer/actor Seth MacFarlane) and c.) she is mind-blowingly hot.  The story as it unfolds would not have worked with her character in it, though, so was it a case of not editing the story, or she told them "no freakin' way unless I get CLOSE to what Walberg's getting." I guess we will never know.  Next, it is a lot of the same old thing.  Ted was great because it didn't try to be anything else that just a great, old-fashioned dirty romp.  Ted 2 is that, but I think it's a little too self-aware this time, almost as if the characters are in on the joke, winking at us.  That's not to say there aren't some really funny jokes here, because there are, but Ted was a sublimely raunchy film, with great joke after joke after joke.  You wait a little too long for the funny here, and that's not good.

It also does get sequel-itis as well.  It rips off a lot of older movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles as well as a bizarre Busby Berkely-inspired opening credits sequence reminiscent of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or the beginning of Family Guy.  I'm not exactly sure why MacFarlane keeps thinking this is funny and returning to this well.  Maybe it's the pomposity of it, but it just leaves me scratching my head.  It's not funny, and that isn't the way you want to start a comedy.  They also shoehorn in a lot of characters from the first film like Guy (Patrick Warburton) and Donny (Giovanni Ribisi).  However, Guy's appearance at the end at New York Comic-Con is sublime.  The whole ending at Comic-Con is very surreal and funny.  But it was too little, too late.  I enjoyed ted 2, a little more than mildly.  It made me laugh pretty hard sometimes, but lightning doesn't always strike the same place twice. It came close this time, but ultimately misses the mark, sadly.