Thursday, October 1, 2026
**** of *****
Running time: 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, and some drug use.
Ted, the outrageously funny new film from Seth McFarlane, tells the story of an unbreakable friendship between an average guy (Mark Wahlberg) and Ted, his magically come-to-life teddy bear (voiced by McFarlane). It's as heartwarming and snugly as a child's fantasy and as raunchy and wine-sodden as a Greek bacchanal.
The transition from small screen to movies is not always easy, but McFarlane, the creator/producer/writer/director of such popular television programs as Family Guy, The Cleveland Show and American Dad, has successfully transferred his off-kilter vision of middle-class American life to the big screen. The lion's share of the credit goes to him, as he wrote the screen story, executed the screenplay (with Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild), served as director and co-producer of the picture, and provided the bear's vocalizations as it overindulges in drugs, alcohol and (thankfully not graphically shown) sexual shenanigans.
But the film could not succeed without the teddy bear being so real that you forget you're watching a digital image. Ted is brought to life by the seamless special effects work of the Tippett studio, responsible in the past for such groundbreaking work as Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, Starship Troopers' alien bugs and such down-to-earth characters as The Smurfs and the creatures of Charlotte's Web.
One never stops to question how a fuzzball made of cloth and stuffing can inhale from a bong without the smoke seeping from its seams, much less how it can down a beer, or two or five, without leaking. And in the film's most outrageous sequence, a classic fistfight to rival John Wayne or Lee Marvin (or both, in John Ford's Donovan's Reef), Ted and Wahlberg duke it out in a superbly choreographed brawl that will be remembered and commented upon for decades.
Like many contemporary comedies, Ted features an endless display of raunchiness, bad taste and infantile behavior. This may offend some audience members. But given that this low style of comic filmmaking rules at the 2012 box office, Ted manages succeed on multiple levels. It mixes a believable romance between Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, delivers a unique twist on the bromance comedy and touches your heart with every child's dream that magic can exist in their lives.
