Manic Expression

A Quick Review of

It was either this or a male stripper movie.

The Plot:

A young boy makes a wish that his Teddy bear was alive. This wish comes true and the film jumps ahead to 27 years later and becomes a generic story where a couple want to move on with their relationship, but the guy has a friend who won’t quite let him grow up and gets in the way.

So How Was It?

This film is made by the same guy who does Family Guy, and boy does it show. The same pop culture heavy humor is present in this film. The film is full of cameos, most of which are rather pointless, but there is one that leads to a pretty good joke. However that being said, I’m one of those people in the minority where I do not like Family Guy, so keep that in mind for this review. For me the pop culture references got very old fairly quickly (the scene that got the biggest laugh from the crowd was one ripped directly out of Airplane!, but it honestly only made me want to watch Airplane!) and the other jokes which try to be offensive and go for shock value just don’t work for me. I wasn’t upset by them; I just shook my head and had to ask myself if people really thought this stuff is funny. Maybe I’m being a little too hard on the film, but it just doesn’t offer anything we haven’t seen before. The script as I said before is fairly generic and the novelty of having a living Teddy Bear as one of the character wears of fairly quickly. As a result, you go through a lot of movie like this. Bored for 15 minutes, chuckle at a funny scene. Repeat until the end credits. And to me personally, the worst thing a film can do is bore you. Let’s compare this to another film I recently reviewed, That’s My Boy. Both films share similar tones, a man child, overuse of cameos, and going for crude joke just for the sake of going for crude jokes. However unlike with this movie I was never bored while watching That’s My Boy. Sure there were moments in that I thought were just as, if not more, stupid as moments in this film, but it kept my interest throughout the whole thing. Acting wise, it was alright I guess. Mila Kunis does a decent job in here role, but something about Mark Wahlbergs acting seemed off to me. Can’t put my finger on what exactly, but it never seemed to clicked, probably has to him interacting with a character that wasn't actually there. Now I want to end this on a positive, so I will say that effects on Ted look pretty good and he looks like Teddy Bear that is 27 years old, with patches worn out and such.

My Score: 3/10

My Advice: I really wanted to like this movie after all the good reviews I saw for it, but this just wasn’t for me. While a scene here and there made me chuckle, most of these were in the trailer with the exception of one good cameo I won’t spoil for those who do want to see the movie. Fans of Family Guy will enjoy it, but for everyone else I say skip it. Again, not an awful film, just not for me.

Thanks to everyone for taking a look at my blog and I hope to see you again next time. For those interested I recently did a list of the Top 9 Cosmic Characters from Marvel Comics. The link is below I hope you enjoy it. Until next time.

http://manicexpression.webs.com/apps/blog/show/16678924-top-9-marvel-cosmic-characters