Written by Seth MacFarlane and Alec Sulkin & Wellesley Wild Directed by Seth MacFarlane Running Time: 1:46 Rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, and some drug use. B

Ted was, at times, ridiculously funny but at other times, not so much.

John didn't have a lot of friends as a kid, so one night he made a wish asking that his teddy bear, Ted, could be his friend. Lo and behold the next morning, Ted was alive and kicking. He soon became the talk of the country, appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson among other shows. But, like most, his celebrity soon died down and it was back to John and Ted, living together in an apartment. Years later John started dating Lori who tolerated Ted but soon realized that John was never going to grown up with Ted around. Forced to choose between Ted and Lori, John sends Ted out into the world on his own, where bad things tend to happen.

Ted was one of my top-3 choices for the summer and it delivered, though not as consistently as I had hoped. Yes, it certainly helps if you're a Seth MacFarlane fan and enjoy his type of humor. The only things missing were the 30-second cutaways. But the random pop culture reference (in this case, Flash Gordon) that kept popping up during the film was there. The raunchy humor was definitely there. And the wisecracking talking animal was there. The story was seriously predictable, and there was a strange plot point that revolved around a creepy guy and his son wanting Ted for their own which felt out of place, but all in all the movie was pretty funny and worth seeing. The animation was pretty seamless with Ted looking like he was really part of the film. I liked the idea that he became a celebrity and not just a secret that people were trying to hide, as most of these kinds of movies do. It was a little strange there wasn't a scene with government scientists trying to dissect him to figure out what made him tick, but beyond that it all made perfect sense - once you get past the idea that a teddy bear just came to life. Sometimes the movie felt like it could have been a 30-minute TV episode that got extended to 106 minutes, but at least within those extra minutes there were a lot of random gags and not just drama. While the stories were weak, the humor was strong enough to carry through, even if you've never seen Flash Gordon.

I can tell you right now the winner of the next MTV Movie Award for best fight sequence will go to Ted vs. John in the hotel room. While it wasn't the funniest scene in the movie, it was pretty impressive watching Mark Wahlberg beat up, and get beaten up, by a teddy bear. Thinking back on the film there was no one scene that sticks out as being the funniest, but there were a lot of small moments that added up. There's a scene in the commercials where Ted is hitting on a fellow cashier at the grocery store. Let's just say the commercial scene is PG-13 while what actually happens in the movie is definitely R. There wasn't a lot of nudity surprisingly for an R-rated comedy - just one random scene that involved Garfield. Most of the R rating came from the language and the continual drug use. How Ted got high is beyond me since I don't see how he's able to breathe, but it's a movie about a talking teddy bear, so I'll let it go.

So overall, I liked Ted. It wasn't as consistently funny as it could have been, but I loved the humor I got out of it and would definitely see it again.