Review: "Ted 2"

The line between television and the movies has gotten blurrier, but it's still there.

Even with grander ambitions, big budgets and a show spanning nine weeks being dubbed a "season," television is just a fundamentally different medium than movies.

One of the chief ways is pacing. TV starts and stops -- a lot. Aside from the episodic nature of, well, episodes, you've got all those commercials and credits. Plus no one thinks anything of hitting the pause button to get a snack, or starting a show one day and finishing it a week later.

With movies, you're required to invest in the experience. You're locked in, and there shouldn't be room for distraction. So when a film can't find a stable rhythm, it ends up throwing off the audience, too.

"Ted 2," like its predecessor, is a schizophrenic flick that goes a million miles a minute one moment, then slows down to an aching crawl the next. It's got some really funny bits, spaced pretty far apart, but also some strangely treacly parts and even some stuff that's intended to be inspiring.

This, in a movie where the main characters visits a sperm donation clinic, one of them stumbles into some samples and gets doused in... uh, manly fluids.

Watching it is a whiplash experience. You never quite know where the movie's going to go next, so when a moment arrives you kind of brace for impact, wondering whether you're supposed to laugh or go, "Awwww."

You know the story: Ted, a teddy bear who came alive through the power of a child's wish, grew up into a profane little fuzzy dude who likes to smoke bongs and say the f-word a lot. He hangs with his human best buddy Johnny (Mark Wahlbeg), and they get high a lot and talk crudely about women, gays, minorities, etc.

This go-round there's a question about Ted's standing as a person. When he and his Boston tramp wife, Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth), try to adopt a kid -- Ted lacks the pertinent parts to father one himself -- he loses his legal status, his job and his mojo. They get a lawyer and go to court, with Amanda Seyfried playing the young attorney who takes their case and gets doe-eyed with Johnny.

Seth MacFarlane, who co-wrote, directed and does the voice of Ted, is a pretty brilliant and brilliantly successful TV guy -- "Family Guy," "American Dad," etc. He instinctively gets the medium, its history and its foibles. But he seems determined to segue into movies, despite lacking a knack for it.

Oh, I know, I know... the first "Ted" made a half-billion dollars at the box office and earned him a gig hosting the Oscars. Popularity and accomplishment aren't the same thing.

At a tick under two hours the movie is way too long, and plenty of sections seem like filler. At several points "Ted 2" unabashedly steals scenes from other, better movies like "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and "The Breakfast Club." Maybe they're supposed to be homages, but they come across as self-indulgent and unnecessary.

You will laugh at "Ted 2," but you will also be bored. I kept wanting to fast-forward, but it's the wrong kind of screen.

Review: "Ted"

"Ted" is funny when it's funny, and not when it's not, and boy is there a whole lot of that second part.

When it's on, this raunchy starring Mark Wahlberg and a computer-generated teddy bear contains some of the best laughs of any movie I've seen this year. Unfortunately, the dead spots in between the yucks grow larger and longer, until the funny stuff is the oasis and the rest of the movie is dry and endless as the Mojave.

"Ted" comes from the team behind much of Fox Television's Sunday animated comedy lineup: "Family Guy," "American Dad" and "Cleveland Guy." Seth MacFarlane directed and co-wrote the script with Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, and also does the voice of Ted. (Who sounds a heckuva lot like Peter Griffin from "Family Guy" with a heavy clam chow-dah ladling of Beantown accent.)

Their crude but witty humor is on full display in all its non-censored cinematic glory, personified by a magical plush bear who's horny as a beaver, smokes copious weed and uses the F-word liberally.

But MacFarlane et al are feature film novices, and it shows.

The setup is that John Bennett (Wahlberg) wished Teddy to life on Christmas Day when he was 8, instantly turning him into a worldwide sensation. But nearly three decades later, he's just another faded celebrity mooching off his best friend.

John has turned into a 35-year-old slacker who (barely) works at a rental car agency. His girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) recognizes that John can't grow up until he puts away childish things, but it's hard to split up these best buds.

Whenever the movie veers too long away from Ted and his antics, things come to almost a dead stop. The will-he-or-won't-he tension of John's big decision ends up becoming a dreadful bore, and pitiful attempts at pathos in between the fart jokes just stink up the place.

MacFarlane and his team are best at throwaway jokes and non sequiturs -- the same stuff, incidentally, that led to "South Park" mercilessly skewering "Family Guy" in one of their most famous episodes.

For instance, it's established that John and Ted are obsessed with the so-bad-it's-good version of "Flash Gordon" from the '80s. So when they get a chance to meet Sam Jones, who played the platinum-haired hero, it's a hilarious mix of pop culture references and self parody. Jones plays along gallantly, portraying a satirical, hard-partying version of himself a la Neil Patrick Harris in the "Harold & Kumar" flicks.

Other story elements don't work as well. There's a whole subplot of Giovanni Ribisi as an adult fan of Teddy who wishes to buy, borrow or steal him -- ostensibly for his kid, but really to satisfy his own creepy cravings.

It's a one-joke bit that goes nowhere, until Ribisi busts out some deliciously androgynous dance moves for no apparent reason. One thing has nothing to do with the other, but for a minute the laughs are switched on again.

That's the way it goes with "Ted," a comedic feast or famine. If you can stomach the long, dull stretches, you might find the prize worthwhile. For me, this bear story was overstuffed.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Contraband"

A compact, tidy little heist thriller, "Contraband" took in a major score at the box office early this year, raking in $66 million on a budget of just $25 million. And it features Mark Wahlberg being so effective in a role tailor-made for him, as the cool confidence man, the underdog who keeps one step ahead of those looking to do him in.

I must confess that early in his career, I was not a fan of Wahlberg's thespian skills. Truth be told, I mocked him for his wooden line delivery and unyielding sour expression. But he's grown considerably as an actor over the years, and seems to have gotten smart about what sort of parts work best for him.

(As opposed to, say, Nicolas Cage, another talented performer who -- as The Onion recently pointed out -- seems to rely on a 12-year-old to choose his roles for him.)

Wahlberg plays Chris Faraday, a one-time expert smuggler who's decided to go straight. But he gets sucked by into that world when his brother-in-law dumps a large shipment of drugs after the authorities raid his boat.

The local crime boss (Giovanni Ribisi) insists that Chris cover the loss -- with the implicit threat that his wife and kids will pay if he won't -- and the only way to raise that kind of scratch quickly is to head to Panama on a counterfeiting scheme. Soon his neat little plan gets blown up, and Chris finds himself in a crazy web of intrigue, with threats looming on every side.

Loosely adapted from an Icelandic film, "Contraband" is tightly-wound and a great star showcase for Wahlberg.

Video goodies are decent enough without being ostentatious. There's a feature-length commentary track by director/producer Baltasar Kormákur -- who, curiously enough, was the star of the original film -- and producer Evan Hayes.

There are also two featurettes: "Under the Radar: The Making of Contraband" and "Reality Factor: The Stunts and Action of Contraband," plus a handful of deleted scenes.

Extras are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions, except the latter also includes a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Contraband"

Here's a tidy little heist/thriller starring Mark Wahlberg doing what he does best: Playing the lone wolf vying against the various forces arrayed against him. Lately Wahlberg's roles have gravitated more toward characters motivated to protect his family, rather than just watching his own back.

But once things get going, it's all about Wahlberg out-muscling and out-thinking his enemies. He specializes in playing the underdog who always seems to gain the upper hand.

"Contraband" is based, very loosely, on an Icelandic film about a smuggler, and is directed by Baltasar Kormákur, who was the star and one of the producers of the earlier movie. I admit I've never heard of the star of a foreign movie directing an American actor in the Hollywood remake. (Imagine Noomi Rapace tapped to helm the American version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.")

"Contraband" has misplaced aspirations toward something a little deeper, with a fine cast that includes Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Diego Luna and J.K. Simmons.

It's a rather large and motley crew of characters, good guys and bad guys and bad guys pretending to be good guys. Walberg is Chris Faraday, the lone good guy who plays at being a bad guy.

The former king of smugglers who went straight, Chris is lured/forced into the quintessential One Last Job when his young brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) screws up a shipment, tossing a batch of drugs overboard when his ship is interdicted. The local drug kingpin, Tim Briggs, is played by Ribisi, who has a flair for skeevy malevolence. Briggs makes it clear that unless Chris covers the loss, Faraday's family will be targeted.

Kate Beckinsale has the thankless role as the wife, Kate, whose job is to look pretty and vulnerable, try to talk Chris out of going back to crime, and never do anything logical. After Briggs invades her home, threatens her sons with a gun and drives a truck through her hair salon, you'd think Kate would've learned 9-1-1 on her keypad.

Instead, she turns to Chris' best friend Sebastian for help. A former partner in crime, Sebastian sets up Chris' job but doesn't accompany him on the trip to Panama. He's played by Ben Foster, who also does skeevy pretty well.

Just to show what a good bad guy Chris is, he refuses to smuggle drugs in order to pay back Briggs, opting instead to bring in counterfeit dollar bills. This presents a logistical nightmare, since the amount of funny money needed will practically fill its own storage container. But Chris is the master of subterfuge, nicknamed Houdini for his ability to slip past other criminals and the law.

On most any level of serious consideration, "Contraband" isn't a particularly good movie. Its plot twists telegraph themselves pretty clearly, and every performer other than Wahlberg is only afforded a few scenes to piece together any depth to their characters.

But darn it, I just couldn't help having fun. The action goes all over the place, so that at one point Chris gets recruited into a Panamanian armored car robbery -- the heist within the heist. (Actually, there's yet another layer of theft, which I'll leave the audience to discover.)

J.K. Simmons is a hoot as the truculent ship's captain, who's not so much offended that a known smuggler like Chris is running an operation on his boat as the fact that he wasn't cut in on the scam.

"Contraband" may not be anybody's idea of great filmmaking, but with its scene-stealing cast, a few clever potboiler scenes and another sturdy performance from Wahlberg, it left me pleasantly snookered.

3 stars out off our