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MOVIE REVIEW

Ted 2

MPA Rating: R-Rating (MPA) for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, and some drug use.

Reviewed by: Gabriel Mohler
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating: Extremely Offensive
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Fantasy Comedy Sequel
Length: 1 hr. 55 min.
Year of Release: 2015
USA Release: June 26, 2015 (wide—3,200+ theaters)
DVD: December 15, 2015
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Relevant Issues

Who is writer/director/producer SETH MACFARLANE? —atheist / mother died after long cancer battle / named the Harvard Humanist of the Year (2011) for “his active, passionate commitment to Humanist values” / executive producer of “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,” an update of the Carl Sagan–hosted “Cosmos” series / campaigned for Barack Obama for President / board member of the progressive liberal advocacy organization People for the American Way /active U.S. Democratic Party supporter / supports full legalization of cannabis / passionate supporter of Gay “rights” and Gay marriage


What are the likely consequences of continual crude sexual talk and actions?

consequences of constant use of foul and profane language

divorce

trying to solve fighting in a marriage by having a child

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addiction to Internet pornography

PORNOGRAPHY—How can I tell if I’m getting addicted to pornography or sex? Answer

TEMPTATIONS—How can I deal with temptations? Answer

sperm donors

ovaries ruined through excessive drug use

adoption laws

adoption in the Bible

smoking marijuana for pleasure

How can I decide whether a particular activity—such as smoking, gambling, etc.—is wrong? Answer

irresponsible and hedonistic lifestyle / sin and the fall of man

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Are we living in a moral Stone Age? Answer

sin versus goodness and righteousness

How do I know what is right from wrong? Answer

bears in the Bible

Sex, Love and Relationships
Learn how to make your love the best it can be. Christian answers to questions about sex, marriage, sexual addictions, and more. Valuable resources for Christian couples, singles and pastors.
Featuring Seth MacFarlane … Ted (voice)
Mark WahlbergJohn Bennett
Amanda SeyfriedSamantha Jackson
Morgan Freeman … Patrick Meighan
Liam Neeson
Patrick WarburtonGuy
Jessica Barth … Tami-Lynn
Patrick StewartNarrator (voice)
Dennis Haysbert
Giovanni Ribisi … Donny
John Slattery … Shep Wild
Tom Brady … Tom Brady
Jay Leno … Jay Leno
Jimmy Kimmel … Jimmy Kimmel
See all »
Director Seth MacFarlane
Producer Seth MacFarlane
Jason Clark
See all »
Distributor

Prequel: “Ted” (2012)

If someone talks about disturbing movies, the first thing that usually comes to mind is a slasher full of gratuitous gore and brutality. And those movies should definitely be avoided. However, it’s only a matter of opinion whether those movies are more disturbing than sex comedies. Personally, “Ted 2” was one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. It’s proof that you don’t need nudity or sex scenes to make an extremely filthy, immoral film.

Movie reviews aren’t supposed to rant, but from a moral perspective, it will be almost impossible to honestly review this movie without ranting. Indeed, the very opening of this film is proof of how perverted and depraved the modern culture is. A narrator says: “A talking teddy bear is about to marry his girlfriend… proving that America doesn’t give a s**t about anything.” The talking teddy bear, of course, is fantasy. But there is a tragic truth in that statement regarding other things—yet in the movie, it is said in pride.

For young readers, I’ll just say this: this movie will pervert your mind in ways you can’t imagine. Please don’t read any further. But for mature readers who want more helpful information, I will attempt the challenge of sufficiently discussing the material without making the review itself perverted.

The moviemaking quality is pretty good. The bear looks cute and moves well. The acting is great. The plot is original, especially for a sequel. All Ted’s human rights are being taken away from him, because he’s a stuffed animal. So a court of law must prove that he is a human being. He and his wife also want to have a baby, so they must find a sperm donor. Ted’s buddy Johnny (Mark Wahlberg) may be finding love in one of the lawyers.

Just the plot alone is raunchy, but the movie overflows with sexual jokes of almost every kind. It’s ironic that Ted criticizes Johnny for having porn on his computer; meanwhile he’s often cracking very explicit jokes. There are a few lines in favor of homosexuality. A significant portion of the movie deals with trying to find a sperm donor (although—spoiler—they end up adopting at the end, instead). It’s debatable whether or not sperm donations are sinful themselves, but Ted and Johnny’s first attempt to get sperm is by breaking into a man’s house while he’s asleep—you’ve figured out the rest. In another scene, Johnny is at a sperm bank and a shelf falls on top of him. Of course, this is already extremely crass, but the writers beat the dead horse about it.

This movie also bursts at the seams with profanity. “God” is misused 34 times, “Jesus” 17, “Christ” 8, “Hell” 19, “damn” 9. I counted 101 f-words. One of them is with “mother,” and one is even in a wedding vow. There are 19 f-words in the first 10 minutes, and much of the first 10 minutes is just music with opening titles. 57 s-words, 6 b-words, 2 uses of ni**er, 2 of ba**ard, 1 of mofo, 26 of @$$, 1 of pi$$. Plus there’s all the other vulgar slang sexual terms.

Ted and Johnny are seen smoking pot a few times. There is a fistfight between Ted and Johnny. A cocaine user hits a man in the face. There is a minor car crash. The real violence begins when a large group of people engage in a fistfight—but no injuries are shown. Then a giant TV falls on Johnny, and he has to go to the hospital. The doctors say he died, but it turns out that Johnny was pranking (spoiler I know, but I hope you don’t care).

Positive elements? It’s 1 to 99, but there were a few very minor bits of positive message. One of the lawyers tells Ted that he would have a better chance of winning the case if he had done some good for society, instead of indulging in drugs and prostitutes. This statement can barely count as a positive element, though, because it’s basically hypocrisy in light of the rest of the movie. At the end, John risks his life to save Ted. There are also two good quotes. Ted tells his wife “If we got a kid to love, it will teach us how to love each other better.” He later says to Johnny and his lawyer, “It doesn’t matter what the world calls me; I know who I am… and I know who my friends are.” Sorry, but the defending attorney calling Ted a “gift from God” doesn’t count; if anything, it’s said in vain because of how disgraceful the rest of the movie is.

What more is there to say? This is one of the most morally disgusting movies of the year. While everyone else in the theater was laughing their heads off, I was feeling sick my stomach. (I didn’t feel like buying popcorn for this movie, but now I wish I had, for any kind of relief. But eating while watching this movie might have just made me throw up anyway.) It’s so bent out of shape, too, how the characters fight for Ted’s rights as a human being, but the culture that loves this movie is one that fights for abortion—just because little baby humans can’t express emotion.

A movie about a friendly, talking bear should be cute. I recommend “Paddington,” it’s a family-friendly movie with nice clean humor. But I pray that God will protect people from either of the “Ted” movies, and also that it the franchise will end here. I hope this review was helpful, now please also pray that God will help me forget what I saw and heard.

Violence: Heavy / Profanity: Extreme / Sex/Nudity: Extreme

Editor’s Note: Keep in mind that the DVD version of this movie is UNRATED, the content being even worse than the theatrical release.

“VOTING” FOR BAD MOVIES—Every time you buy a movie ticket or rent a video you are casting a vote telling Hollywood “That’s what I want.” Why does Hollywood continue to promote immoral programming? Are YOU part of the problem? Answer

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
Negative
Negative—I was absolutely shocked at the blasphemous content of this film—highly offensive. Not just to Christians, but to any moral, right-thinking, family person. Very sad that Hollywood has stooped so low to this level. The acting is appalling and untalented, but that is not the main issue. The gratuitous, juvenile offensive content is by far the worst ever. Or maybe just the worst I have ever come across. It is moronic in the extreme.

It could be a really funny film, about a teddy bear that has a magical human ability. Instead, the bear person comes across as a really lurid, sexually predatory, sick personality. The shocking use of the name of Jesus Christ in a really blasphemous way was shocking, and I have not heard anything as bad in a long time. Even films like “Pulp Fiction,” which are horrendously violent and sick, did not seem to equal the disgusting language heard in this film. Sorry that such work was put into producing such rubbish.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Extremely Offensive / Moviemaking quality: ½
Geraldine Smith, age 55 (United Kingdom)
Movie Critics
…Seth McFarlane, Mark Wahlberg scrape bottom of barrel in effort to be funny… the sequel feels desperate from frame one… The jokes in “Ted 2” are stale, repackaged leftovers. … [1/5]
Jacob Hall, New York Daily News
…a redundant showcase for its maker’s racy, dick-centric sense of humor… Ted 2 aspires to political provocation, except MacFarlane's considerations of modern civil liberties feel heavy-handed, playing second fiddle to the sheer weight of his comedy's largely D-grade shock value. …[1½/4]
Chris Cabin, Slant magazine
…Both “Ted” movies are, ultimately, one-joke affairs rooted in the idea of taking some emblem of childhood innocence and vulgarizing it …overlong… locker-room humor, gross-out sight gags and bounteous pop-culture in-jokes…
Scott Foundas, Variety
…it’s unbearable… It’s hard to keep track of how many ways this goes wrong, cinematically…
Stephen Whitty, The Star-Ledger (New Jersey)
…Sequel’s filthy jokes are desperate, celeb cameos pointless… a new adventure of pot, celeb cameos, pot, gross outs, and pot, it plays out like a smug game of “let’s see how we can fill two hours while we cash these ginormous paychecks.” And we’re the losers. … [2/4]
Mara Reinstein, US Weekly
…Overstuffed plot spoils irreverent, silly “Ted 2”… nearly two-hour rumination on civil rights and abject stupidity…
Associated Press
…overstuffed sequel… Does a foul-mouthed Teddy Ruxpin knockoff deserve two feature length movies? The answer is no, of course not… it’s mostly just tedious. Tedious. Ted-ious. Ha.
William Bibbiani, Crave
…A sequel fully up to the hit-and-miss quality of the original… I laughed three or four times, mostly at verbal byplay since director MacFarlane struggles when it comes to timing, filming and cutting sight gags, many of them (including the accident at the fertility clinic) straight out of his cash cow “Family Guy.” … [2]
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
…the sequel still manages to walk the tightrope between clever and crass. For a while, at least. Then, after the 10th or 11th semen gag, crass wins out, leaving clever in the dust. … [C+]
Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

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