Release date: June 29, 2012 

Finally Giovanni Ribisi doesn’t kill it for me!

I was bestowed the honour of watching Seth MacFarlane‘s Ted. And boy, let me tell you this is a wild ride. This comedy is the true essence of a buddy/bromance flick. Let’s ignore the fact that it’s a 30 something Mark Walhberg playing with a stuffed bear and accept that he can still score a hot chick like Mila Kunis.

Ted was written and directed by Family Guy/American Dad/The Cleveland Show‘s Seth MacFarlane. Who did you know was involved with Dexter’s Laboratory? This film follows chiselled-bodied, overwhelmingly-underachiever, astraphobia sufferer John Bennett (Walhberg) as he tries to balance his friendship with his magical stuffed bear named Ted (MacFarlane) and his super hot girlfriend Lori (Kunis). Along the way Ted gets mixed up with people that scare the stuffing out of him.

What Worked:

– First and Foremost: THE CGI. Hot damn! That bear looked great. I really felt like he fit into his environment. There have been many times where the CGI kills a film worse than the writing. I’m speaking openly about the werewolves in Twilight. No gravity much? Back to Ted; you forget so much that this bear isn’t real that when they show an actual stuffed teddy bear on screen you just feel weird looking at it. Like a corpse that you had to travel through fields, a junk yard and a train bridge just to see.

– Giovanni Ribisi. I’ve given this guy a lot of flack in recent years. See Rum Diary He feels like such a character actor nowadays. I don’t know if this film just fit his style of “I’m crazy and I know it;” or Macfarlane got him to tone it down from “crazy level ex-girlfriend’s clingy mom” to “I’m 40 and like Hello Kitty.”

– Marky Mark! I’ll be honest; I wasn’t sure I could believe that this guy could be a vulgar, lazy 30 something year-old stoner. But after two minutes of watching his Bostonian banter with Ted, you feel like he was born to play this role. A far cry from the work he did in The Happening.

– The pacing. I’m going to give this one up to editing. Like much of Macfarlane’s work, the editing is quick and crisp. This movie clocks in at 106 minutes, and it feels just right.

– THE FIGHT SCENE. I have no f–king clue how they managed to film such an awesome sequence, but that scene alone merits seeing this flick in the cinema, the buying the bluray and watching the special features.

What Didn’t work:

– The feeling. I don’t know how to title this, but it just felt like Ted could be such an awesome show. Or at least 6 part mini series like they do on BBC. Maybe that was the downside of the awesome pacing. Maybe we lost some material that wasn’t referenced in a certain gag, but was useful in the set up?

The Lowdown:

Ted is a fully self-aware flick that won’t rise up and kill you in the first of the film-robot apocalypse. It’s a film that will have you laughing, snorting and yelling “oh snap!” This film deserve your attention and time. It’s well worth putting down your bong and not tweeting while driving as you get your ass to the nearest cinema while wearing pants to watch.

Ted is Verified Wicked Awesome.