Any time anyone says Hollywood is stuck in a loop of regurgitating ideas and playing it safe, it's your duty to point the accuser towards Ted 2 and Seth MacFarlane. Not in terms of him making a film about a puerile, weed-loving teddy bear, but more specifically in terms of the gags he pulls off. Every time there's a joke in there that leaves you slack-jawed and every time an A-lister takes a verbal beating, it's MacFarlane pushing his luck and getting away with it. In fact, exactly like Ted getting promoted in the first film for increasingly debauched behaviour at work. But then what can you expect from the kind of mind that apparently only has two settings - in an almost adorably simple way. In Ted 2, MacFarlane expresses his love and appreciation of actors, pop culture references and established characters in the only ways he can possibly conceive of: either by making them have sex with something or each other, or by ribbing them playfully. To the point where he attempts to make a complete fool of them in the name of showering them with love. At least he's not a sycophant. His cameos at least do more than trotting out recognisable faces like 90% of Adam Sandler's movies and pandering to their star status. Pulling their pants down a bit is far more entertaining: it's just that when MacFarlane does it - with his oddly endearing bitter-sweet love - it comes off like the creepy and slightly dangerous affection of a simpleton. The most surprising element of it all is that MacFarlane actually manages to convince his stars to play along. If his weird little fantasies and jokes were left to grow on their own in a dark recess of his brain there'd be no issue, but at some point, the director has turned them into actual words and managed, inconceivably, to get agents and studios to sign off on them as viable ideas...
6. The One About Liam Neesons Cameo
MacFarlanes eye for comedy is not really to be questioned: he built both Family Guy and American Dad on a mix of puerile and high-intellect biting comedy that few shows outside The Simpsons have managed. Its just that as hes got more successful, people seem to have stopped giving him any feedback when he forgets about the artistry of restraint. Sometimes comedy is about not saying the obvious thing, or not filling dead space with self-indulgent gags that probably werent even funny when they were drawn up around the writing table. What if - and youre going to love this - Liam Neeson turns up, all gritty and whispery, right And he takes every advertising slogan literally. Whats the funniest one? Trix are for kids! Genius, hell demand to know if hes safe to eat them, and then the punch-line will be that theyre not, and hell re-appear beaten up. Thats barely even worth a smile, let alone a set-up that is only paid off in the post-credits stinger. And someone should really have asked MacFarlane to justify precisely why he thought it was even remotely funny. Its not like it channels something in Neesons characters, or a broad truth that misreading advertising slogans can be perilous. Its just pure nonsense. And yet, not only did MacFarlane convince Universal, he also convinced Neeson...
