So, you like it then.

"unforgivable laziness" - isn't that the state of nearly all American cinema?

Filmmakers forget this, over and over, if it's not on the page, it won't be on the screen.

Kunis dives gamely into the sausagefest and rolls around in it with great enthusiasm.

NICE. *leers knowingly, high fives nearest McFarlane-voiced talking animal sidekick*

I read this headline as "Ted: like a more rabid ALF" (emphasis mine). That's way funnier.

Bridesmaids has a series of very funny jokes & characters wrapped around a sentimental story - loveable loser finds self. It was funny when it wasn't being maudlin. And it was maudlin A LOT>

Was The Hangover maudlin?

No it was not. It was a pile of jokes.

Lazy screenwriting - like that time I hired William Shatner to direct my Cialis commercial! [jump cut]

I grew up on Caddyshack, Stripes, Airplane! etc.

Definitely piles and piles of jokes...but each had, to some degree, a story to hang those jokes upon...a story with consequences.

I don't mind a pile of jokes. I don't even mind a movie where you could tell the script was just an outline and talented improv-experienced performers just trusted their instincts (though, I hope that movie has a great editor.)

As far as Ted goes--ehhhhh, I'll probably catch it a few years from now when it comes to Netflix streaming.

@Zebes

What is Ted?
A miserable little pile of jokes.

i have the same problem with family guy

@4,

Me too. He ate one too many cats.

This movie reminds me of a tv show that was on WB or UPN years ago (the name escapes me) that was essentially Married With Children with a talking stuffed bunny that talked only to the dad.

Am I the only person who disliked bridesmaids

@12 (I can't believe my brain is still polluted with this crap but...)Unhappily ever after? (Srsly UPN is a cancer upon the earth)

@13 No, you're not. Bridesmaids was not a great comedy. It was an okay comedy that we are required to think is great COZ WOMEN DID IT proving that they don't need our validation or something.

Personally, I think it's okay to say something was just okay without disparaging the funny and talented women who were involved in it. But that's just me.

why is it wrong that "accepting responsibility" is a large theme in modern film? it's literally the climactic value of 99% of all stories. the protagonist accepts responsibility for something and takes final climactic action to resolve the story.

it's also giant mistake to think that the "man-child" story/archetype is anything new, or indicative of the stagnancy of modern popular culture in the "last ten years"

Marx Brothers - man-children
I Love Lucy - woman-child
Woody Allen - man-child
Murray/Ramis/Belushi - man-children
Seinfeld - man-children

You even cite Bridesmaids and Louis CK's routines as examples of good comedy, when they are completely based around the woman/man-child archetype that you are apparently sick of. Throughout Bridesmaids, Wiig's childish and irresponsible nature puts her at odds with the other characters. In the end, she finds responsible adult love with the police officer and yet retains her woman-childness (she fucking dances to Wilson-Philips). And Louis CK is a erudite inter-city liberal artist who Tweets about dicks, shit, AIDS, and Jews. His whole comedy is about his grown-up liberal nature being at odds with his offensive childishness. Come on!

Your analysis about comedy is contradictory and painful. It's obviously okay to like one thing and not another thing. (I like The Fifth Element and I don't like Blade Runner.) But your writing is neither thoughtful nor entertaining. It's sloppy and second-rate.

@14 I was thinking "Greg the Bunny."

@16 C'mon, didn't you read the review? It's not just that it's a bildungsroman, but one with jokes just haphazardly PILED UP, not at all neatly ordered or bound securely to the plot with ligatures. To obliquely reference an equally unforgivably lazy and haphazard comedy, that sort of sloppy joke application, "That's how we get ants."

My problem with this review is that the criticisms are just piled on. By way of contrast, if you read Armond White's review of "A.I. Artificial Intelligence"* you'll see there's a series of pompous bloviations forming a cohesive and hilarious whole.

*Talk about a creepy and annoying Teddy.

Oh my gosh, this thread is just like that time I was in some completely unrelated situation with a celebrity.

*fart jokes, another animated spin-off*

MacFarlane has had a few moments in Family Guy early on but he is wearing really thin, almost as annoying as Aaron Sorkin and Bill Maher. They just rehash the same routine in comedy and drama over and over again to the point of being so predictable even an ape gets bored with the material.

Just goes to show you even our side of the political spectrum is capable of putting out tons of shit.

Ted talks?

Family Guy has given me some laughs, but I'm not a devoted fan. That being said, I think Seth MacFarlane is extremely talented. He's a writer, voice actor, director, animator, and a pretty great singer. He was also stinking rich by the time he was 30-something. For having created an "unforgivably lazy" film, he seems like the opposite of lazy.

Honestly? I think you could attribute "abject laziness" to Seth McFarlane's work in Gamily Guy past season 4- but there is a lot of really great material in American Dad. And though even that show can spiral off into lame random joke tangents that stall/flatline the episode progression- for the most part it does a great job focusing its humor on the story and not random cutscenes or movie re-enactments.

Credit where credit is due: not all of his work may be good, but Seth McFarlane is a talented guy who does have the capacity to create entertaining and even sometimes poignant humorous stories.

Just saw the film and it was totally entertaining and funny. The Stranger doesn't like anything too mainstream, so this review isn't a surprise.

Why does the fact that Axe body spray was the highest bidder for the endorsement mean this movie has to be crap? I have seen this criticism elsewhere, and it makes no sense to me.

The movie was obviously written with young males in mind, and Axe was simply the young male product that offered the most cash. It has nothing to do with anything else.

Now as to why Axe still exists, that is a whole other issue.

@16, your over-use of "quote marks" is neither correct nor entertaining.

Folks, the review is a about the movie, not McFarlane's career.

Yes, hes amazingly talented.
No, this movie has no plot.
Yes, it is the height of laziness to produce a half-assed movie, especially since Seth IS so farging talented. He could have worked a little harder to develop the story, bu he KNOWS it will be a moneymaker regardless of the effort put into it. He knows this because he's blazing hot (at least with 18-25 males) and those bastards are all going to see it at least once. Now he doesn't have to work so hard anymore.
I'd call that lazy.

I am so disappointed! I thought this was the movie in where physicists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider discovered a new subatomic particle, a potential key to an understanding of why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe.

Instead it was a CGI-animated former rapper making dick jokes (with a stuffed animal). I should’ve stormed out of the theater, but there were far too many other scientists sitting in close proximity to me.

Are we still talking about Medea?