If you go down to the woods today

Ted
DIRECTED BY: Seth MacFarlane
STARRING: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Seth MacFarlane (voice)
CERT: 16

 

A teddy bear comes to life and he’s got a dirty mind, a foul mouth and a weed habit. There have always been places where a pitch like that will get you the green light, there in the outer corners of the film world, out where the dark stuff grows.

These days, in the Hangover age, in the Bridesmaids era, Ted is the stuff of mainstream Hollywood. Which might make you weep for the future, if you weren’t so busy crying with laughter. Strange days indeed.

There’s a boy named John, unpopular and lonely. For Christmas he gets a huge teddy bear and that night John wishes the bear could be real, his bestest buddy forever. In one of those magic movie miracles that tend to involve storms and fountains, good old Teddy makes his wish come true. To get the full effect here, it is probably best to hear Patrick Stewart’s narration, though not if you’re expecting Shakespearean vocabulary.

So Ted (voiced by director, Seth MacFarlane) comes to life, word gets out and, since this doesn’t happen on a regular basis, the talking teddy becomes a celebrity.

Fifteen minutes of fame later he becomes a nobody again and it’s just John and Ted, still bestest buds. Only now John (Wahlberg) is 35 and there’s suggestions in certain quarters that it’s about time the boy grew up and moved on. As always, these suggestions are coming mostly from women, who seem to feel that John’s girlfriend, Lori (Kunis), should be putting the foot down about some kind of future. As if a man who spends his time getting high with a stuffed bear and fondly recalling their youthful infatuation with Flash Gordon, is some kind of dodgy prospect.

Naturally, party animal Ted sees Lori as a threat. The threats get even creepier when the stuffed stoner attracts the disturbing attention of an old fan, Donny (Giovanni Ribisi), and his wretched spoiled son, Robert (Aedin Mincks).

As far as you can call this thing a plot, it also involves a party with an ageing movie star and a mad duck and fond remembrances of a torrid teddy bear love affair with a singer in the 1990s. Fans with her records in their collections may never listen to those lyrics in quite the same way, ever again.

Ted is the feature film debut of Seth MacFarlane, the chap behind Family Guy, and no matter how cute you think those trailers look, this is not a movie for the whole family. It’s frequently crass and vulgar and, unless you want to give them a stoner’s version of an education in drugs and loose women, you should keep the children away.

For the older kids among us, there’s some very funny stuff here, mixed in with the usual tired old gay jokes, celebrity gags and toilet humour in general. It won’t win any prizes for subtlety or taste, but there’s enough sharp comedy and wit here to make it worth the while if you’re looking for a laugh.

Seeking A Friend for the End of the World
DIRECTED BY: Lorene Scafaria
STARRING: Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, William Petersen, Rob Corddry
CERT: 15A

This one has been around a few weeks now and is worth a gander if you’re looking for an alternative to the opening heats of the Olympic U-10 colouring competition.

The scenario here is our old friend, the end of the world. There’s an asteroid heading for Earth, a 70-mile-wide monster that will obliterate the planet if it hits. And it will. In an alternate universe to the one where a man like Bruce Willis would save us all with a well-placed bomb, the space shuttle mission to destroy this asteroid has failed. The world has three weeks and the clock is ticking. What would you do?

Dodge (Carell) doesn’t really have a plan. Upon hearing the news, his wife has fled. With the apocalypse approaching and the world going mad around him, Dodge shacks up in his apartment, alone but for a lonely dog, his new best friend.

Then Dodge meets a woman named Penny (Knightley) who lives nearby, one of those weirdly kooky creatures who only live in movies, though I have had the misfortune to meet a few souls who try to be like these weirdly kooky movie creatures, but aren’t really like them at all. It’s quite sad.

Anyway, Penny convinces dull old Dodge to take a road trip to help Dodge find the girl he really should have married and Penny to find her family. Along the way they meet the usual assortment of characters, all of whom are dealing with impending doom in their own little way.

Lads like Speck (Derek Luke), who believes his survivalist skills will save him and the gentleman who has hired a hit man to kill him, which is a pretty original way to go. But the strangest of all are the staff at Chipper’s, a restaurant where the staff are your very best friends  and only get more frantically friendly as oblivion approaches.

This is really neither mushy nor funny enough to be called a romantic comedy, but it’s a pleasantly enjoyable little film. Lorene Scafaria (she wrote Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist a few years back) writes and directs, while Carell gives it plenty of his loser charm and even Keira Knightly is watchable. Though I still can’t see her on screen without thinking of a great little tune called Keira Knightley (Eat Your Dinner). It’s sung by Graham Fellows, better known as Jilted John, who had a hit in the 70s with the excellent Gordon Is a Moron.
Oh go on, look it up.