Ted

Been a while since I've gotten to type, in my bed, with a handy internet connection, and without needing to pay attention to any doors or alarms or whatever.

I went to see Ted today, though I probably shouldn't have, just because by the time I got up to go out the door I would have been too late, so I took a cab down there. So that's $40 for cab + movie, $7 for the cheese burger at "Burger Priest", and $15 for the sprite, pineapple dessert thing, and my share of nachos at this place by Dupont and Dufferin "Kitsch". Aye aye aye, $62 for an evening out... and half of that, again, was the cab.

It's hard to wake up!

Ah, it was good to see my pal Josh at the movie, it's fine.

Ted was good. I'm not that big on Family Guy; the characters generally aren't sympathetic and the jump cuts to random events that kill time until the story needs to be gotten to are generally useless.

Yes, I see that I've used generally twice in that last sentence. I should change that.-editor, me

But neither of those things mean I don't think Seth MacFarlane is talented, because the guy sure is. He's absorbed plenty of the stylistic tropes necessary to tell any kind of story, or, if he wants to, to meta-narratively comment on those same tropes. As far as story telling goes, that's his biggest strength. Besides that, he's obviously a walking time capsule for the 80's, so that's hugely appealing for nostalgia purposes.

As far as vocal talents go, I think they speak for themself (see what I did? vocal talents "speak" for themself? Ah, whatever).

And then there's his talent for networking. The cameo factor for this guy is unbelievable. The big one in Ted? Flash Gordon from, I guess, an 80's Flash Gordon show, complete with the rocking theme song.

I thought they could have made the tension between Kunis' character and Ted more apparent at the beginning, when it did appear it sort of came out of nowhere, and as a result I figured Kunis would turn out to be the antagonist. Nope! She saves the day! So, that could have been handled a bit better.

On the other hand, kudos for the portrayal of the man-child that was Mark Wahlberg's character. At the very beginning of the movie when he's late for work he says "it's not my fault" and is asked why, and Wahlberg responds with "I didn't think there'd be a follow up question."

Good for a one off joke, right? Well, yes, but that was actually the earliest example of the core flaw of the protagonist- his inability to take responsibility for his own actions. The examples of this flaw get more glaring as the movie goes on, only by virtue of how often they come up, not through some huge cartoonish bumbling that he has to try and get out of. It's a ramping up of the action, until the character must either acknowledge his flaw and overcome it, or fail. It's a surprisingly real problem, I think realistically portrayed.

I'm just glad that it wasn't the guys sense of humour that was getting torn down by his girlfriend. He's allowed to like the things he likes, but he needs to be responsible and own up to his mistakes. I like it.

All that said, there were a bunch of fart jokes where I was like "oh, sorry, going by the row behind me I guess I'm supposed to be laughing now. My bad."

Whatever, I recommend it.