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Created Jun 27, 2015 12:22AM PST • Edited Jul 12, 2015 02:47AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   America’s funniest Ted-Id-Bear is back in Ted 2, pursuing his own unique form of non-traditional marriage. Buckle up. This is compulsive satire, with the biting gags coming rat-a-tat-tat. It rarely goes more than two lines without a punchline, not even counting the visual comedy, which is nearly as on-the-beat. Plus there is ample singing and dancing. Creator-director-star Seth McFarlane is a prolific genius, the sick bastard.

   Ted 2 is consistently LOL, with frequent giggles in between. Then there’s the regular gotta shake your head at how mean-spirited some of the jokes are. Some violate taboos you didn’t even know existed, because you’d have to be a pretty sick fuck to know they existed. But Seth MacFarlane knows. Boy does he know.

   MacFarlane’s Merry Men keep it up all the way through, but never string together enough LOLs or hit one out of the park so that you feel like you’re going to blow soda out of your nose. High bar, but just saying.

   The movie features profoundly awful people who are very, very funny and very attractive, so we forgive them their trespasses, just as the movie forgives them their outrageously anti-social behaviors.

   Once again Mark Wahlberg gets to be the likable straightman, at which he’s a past-master. Seth MacFarlane voices almost all the punchlines as the Ted-Id-Bear of his own invention. Amanda Seyfried hangs tight with those dumb-n-dumber characters, even allowing her huge blue eyes to get satired. Hell of a sport, that girl. Jessica Barth reprises her brassy Boston babe shtick to great effect. It all works because the humans get to be straightmen, knowing they’ve got a cleanup hitter in MacFarlane’s brutally funny Ted.

   It isn’t all just fun and games. OK, it is all fun and games, but it’s also a brilliant satire of today’s tabloid-TV society, which MacFarlane lampoons as stupid, mean & intoxicated. He mines countless cheap jokes from smart setups, partly why I called Ted 1 a high comedy of low blows. He hasn’t changed. Good thing.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Mark Wahlberg returns as Boston’s nicest hunk, with Seth MacFarlane voicing his lifelike best friend, the stand-in for his own id, his very own Ted-Id-Bear. They’re the Martin & Lewis for a new generation, the one that favors bongs over bourbon. Some of their rat-a-tat-tat bits are right up there with Who’s On First. (Yes, yes, Who’s On First is an Abbott & Costello bit, not a Martin & Lewis bit. Hey, doing the best I can.)

   Jessica Barth also returns as Ted’s brassy babe Tami-Lynn, who doesn’t care that her “man” lacks male equipment. Barth has now proven herself a great comedic actress, with impressive brass, boobs and timing.

   Amanda Seyfried joins this episode as the third wheel in Mark & Ted’s excellent adventure and as the audience’s proxy in reacting to their stupidity. She’s also the romantic interest for Wahlberg, natch. She does great, ever game, always appealing, endearingly ernest.

   Huge Cast of Supporters

   • Giovanni Ribisi returns as a creepy enemy
   • Sam J. Jones returns as himself, once the star of Flash Gordon
   • Patrick Warburton & Michael Dorn as an improbable gay couple
   • Morgan Freeman as a big time NY lawyer
   • Richard Schiff as something
   • Dennis Haysbert as a Fertility Doctor
   • Liam Neeson as an oh-so-serous supermarket customer
   • John Slattery as a hot shit lawyer
   • David Hasselhoff as himself
   • Tom Brady as the ultimate sperm donor: Nice touch saying to him that we don’t care about your balls, you’re not a cheater.
   • Ron Canada as a Judge who says “OH YEAHHH!”

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Seth MacFarlane has created a brilliant and accomplished film, complete with huge song-and-dance numbers that harken back to Busby Berkeley.

    Beyond mere craft, he’s extended the life and relevance of this id reflection on today’s tabloid-TV society. Why stop at Ted 2? Let’s have a three-peat, at least.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    The opening is terrific, with the camera zooming into Earth from outer space, down through the stratosphere, all the way into Boston.

    The dance numbers are also wonderful, both the huge ones and the small ones with Wahlberg and Seyfried.

    Notable Credits

    • 30 stuntmen
    • 200 orchestra members
    • 200 dancers
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.8

    Ted 2 is an abattoir for sacred cows: traditional marriage, heterosexual mores, homosexual proclivities, African-American slavery, 9/11, Charlie Hebdo, Arizona State, etc. Transgressive comedy is the thing.

    The only topless scene involves a woman with three boobs. Really. Count ’em.

    The rudeness is down right nasty however, which is how the whole thing turns so sordid.

17. Sex Titillating 2.0

18. Violence Fierce 1.9

19. Rudeness Nasty 4.5

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.2

    I’m rating the PhysioReality as the most stretched, reasoning that Ted is animatronic, not biological. The whole thing is supernatural however. Hell, the CircoReality is deeply surreal, even absent a sentient toy.

    Movie reality aside, Ted 2 is stuffed to the gills with observations about today’s society. That’s a target-rich environment, but I’ll pick just one small bone. The movie cycles through several cable news shows discussing Ted’s desire for personhood and the right to marriage. When they get to Fox News, one pundit says “We always agree”, which got a laugh in my San Jose theater. However, anyone who actually watches Fox News knows that couldn’t be farther from the truth, as it routinely features the best debate on TV.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Surreal 2.6

24. Physical Fantasy 4.1