Ted 2

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Seth MacFarlane/Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Seth McFarlane (Voice), Amanda Seyfried, Jessica Barth, Morgan Freeman, Giovanni Ribisi and John Carroll Lynch

If you found the foul-mouthed, pot-smoking teddy bear from Ted amusing, Ted 2 will most likely be your creme brulee. I thought there was no way I would ever see a sequel after the gag response I had during the first movie. I really don't mind a bear who swears and tokes; the idea seems like fun but there was something revolting about Ted that I can't quite put my finger on. It isn't the crude, moronic humor--hell, most American movie comedies have that in common. At least this iteration was more gleeful in its pursuit of the obscene. I don't know if the sequel is better or I was better prepared to expect less, but Ted 2 seems less painful and bit more palatable than its predecessor. It's still imbecilic, mind you, but it manages to coax a few chuckles.

All you need to know about the story is that John (Mark Wahlberg) and his teddy bear chum Ted (Seth MacFarlane-voice) are still paling around, watching T.V. together and pulling sophomoric stunts, like pelting joggers and bicyclists with apples from a building rooftop. Their banter is often crude, as you might expect but they manage to be funny every so often.

Ted and his human wife Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) have set up a home in their modest apartment while earning a meager living as grocery store clerks. When the film begins, we see their marriage has hit a rough patch. Unsure of how to remedy marital strife, Ted seeks the counsel of a co-worker, who suggests the couple have a baby. Excited by the prospect of being parents, Ted and Tami-Lynn search for a sperm donor (Ted is unable to share procreative duties, for obvious reasons).

Ted hatches a hair-brained scheme to steal a sample of New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady's semen for his wife's fertilization. Ted and John break into Tom Brady's mansion, where they find the snoozing quarterback, only to be caught and literally thrown out. The scene is fairly amusing, as Brady's recent scandal also takes a satirical jab. Ted then approaches Sam Jones (he of Flash Gordon fame) to solicit his seed, only to be told his years of drug use have rendered him unable to comply. Further travails ensue when Ted learns Tami-Lynn's womb is overly stressed from years of drug use, which makes artificial insemination moot. Adoption becomes the logical alternative.

But Ted and Tami Lynn's problems only accrue when they learn the state refuses to recognize him as a human being, thus denying him the opportunity to adopt. Ted's diminished citizen status also means cancelled credit cards and terminated employment.

Undeterred, John and Ted hope to sue the state for his civil rights by seeking legal representation from a novice lawyer named Samantha L. Jackson (Amanda Seyfried); whose name becomes a source of merriment. Her woeful lack of pop culture knowledge also makes her a target for John and Ted's ridicule.

A trial by jury follows, which ends badly for Ted, as he is denied person status. Still determined to prove otherwise, Ted, John and Samantha seek out the legendary lawyer Patrick Meighan (Morgan Freeman) for more high-profile representation. Meighan's impassioned speech, which compares Ted's situation to the infamous Dred Scott case, tests the boundaries of good taste. Somehow it manages to not seem like a transgression in a film that often skirts the periphery of offensive, ethnic humor.
The film also comes close to being misogynistic but it manages to narrowly avoid that pitfall too.

While a smoldering romance between John and Samantha begins to blossom, Ted's fate hangs in the balance (not really, is it ever in doubt?).

The gags and jokes in the first half of the film wane in the second as the earnestness of Ted's civil rights case assumes center stage. As aforementioned, the jokes are mostly puerile but to quibble about that would be ridiculous. No one comes to a Ted movie expecting Moliere-like wit.

The numerous cameos are fun. One of my favorites involves an appearance by Liam Neeson as he queries Ted about buying a box of Trix cereal while standing in the checkout aisle.

Mark Wahlberg is a real sport for his willingness to muck about in a film that celebrates dumbness in all its incarnations. Ditto for Amanda Seyfried and Morgan Freeman, who manage to emerge with their dignity intact. Maybe I'm being too stodgy. Ted 2 is too harmless and inconsequential to be pilloried further.

It really isn't necessary for me to say more; the trailer says it all. Mr. MacFarlane, can we bury the teddy bear once and for all, please?

While We're Young

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Noah Baumbach/Starring: Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried and Charles Grodin

The anxieties of a childless middle-age couple and their heady re-visitation of youth is the narrative focal point of director Noah Baumbach's new film While We're Young; an amusing, thoughtful comedy/drama that has much on its mind. But Baumbach's film isn't just about youth/maturity parallels but the process of film-making, particularly documentary film and the fuzzy distinction between detached objectivity and the unethical manipulation of subjects and events that purports to be so.

Ben Stiller plays Josh, a documentary film-maker of some renown who is married to Cornelia (Naomi Watts), the daughter of a more famous documentarian Leslie (Charles Grodin). While the filming of Josh's current project drags on, Cornelia assists her father on his own film. We learn early on that Josh and Leslie hardly have an affectionate son-in-law/father-in-law relationship. It doesn't help that Josh feels some measure of inferiority to Leslie as a film-maker; a major source of animosity and resentment.

Josh's film calls to mind the documentary Woody Allen's character in Crimes and Misdemeanors toils over; a high-minded, highly intellectual project that has little chance of engaging any movie-audience.

But Josh has other anxieties; namely his and Cornelia's childlessness in their network of parenting friends. Though Josh and Cornelia's thoughts on being parents are decidedly ambivalent; they actually cringe when they see their best friends, Marina (Maria Dizzia) and her husband (played by former Beastie Boys member Adam Horvitz) fuss with their infant. As they witness the less romantic aspects of parenting, they try to convince themselves they've made the right choice in not having children.

While feeling the pressure of middle-age imperatives, Josh meets a young, hip, twenty-something couple named Jamie (a terrific Adam Driver, who for once has a role that isn't a chalk outline) and Darby (ditto for Amanda Seyfried) who audit his continuing education film course. A conversation is struck following class, where Jamie expresses his reverence for Josh's work and mentions his own film-making aspirations. The couple invite Josh and Cornelia out for dinner, whereby Jamie extends his reverential sentiments to Cornelia for her father's extraordinary work.

Josh and Cornelia become smitten with their new friends' creative energy; even succumbing to their powerful influence. Jamie has Josh buy a hat too young for his head while Darby leads Cornelia to a hip-hop dance class. Josh and Cornelia go so far as to join the young couple in a spiritual cleansing, which entails sitting among a circle of strangers, imbibing a hallucinogenic substance, then vomiting into buckets before having visions of Ancient Egyptian gods and related nonsense.

And the closer Josh and Cornelia and Jamie and Darby become, the further the older couple find themselves drifting from their own friends and their middle-age lifestyle. Cornelia follows Marina to a mother/child music class but ultimately flees in a panic. An awkward scene where Cornelia and Josh show up at Marina's place, only to discover a party in progress to which they haven't been invited, reinforces their disaffection.

But Josh and Cornelia find that their romanticized notions about their young friend's lives may be wildly distorted. Josh often finds he must pick up checks at restaurants every time he dines with Jamie and Darby without any reciprocity. Also, Josh is initially rapturous over Jamie's documentary but gradually becomes disillusioned when he discovers his documentarian's code of ethical conduct isn't shared by his young friend. In time, he also finds that Jamie has few qualms about being dishonest in his film-making.

If one has seen a number of Baumbach's films, one is well acquainted with his acerbic sense of humor and nuanced characters. Very few inhabitants of Baumbach's world ever come off as entirely unlikeable or charming. His characters, like people in the real world, sometimes evoke our sympathy and other times weary impatience. Sometimes they seem virtuous and other times annoyingly self-interested.

In time, Josh realizes Jamie, who very often exhibits a**holish behavior, isn't the amoral jerk as he has him pegged. He is merely, in his own words; "young."

A sequence early in the film subverts our preconceived notions about the habits of the young and old when we see Josh and Cornelia's dependence on electronic media juxtaposed with shots of Jamie and Darby's embrace of throwback culture and gadgets; to wit: typewriters rather than computers and record albums rather than cds'. Also, Jamie and Darby unironically appropriate music and songs once dismissed as cheesy now rehabilitated as cool, like Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger."

Baumbach's film is all about the young/old divide and one man being caught in its interstices but it also has much to say about how Josh's approach to film-making may be antiquated. The methods of master documentarians like Albert Maysles and D.A. Pennebaker no longer apply. Objectivity in film-making, as Josh discovers, isn't an absolute.

The performances are uniformally terrific. Ben Stiller has shown a range in both films he's made with Baumbach he seldom demonstrates in other movies. Watts is always someone to see while Seyfried finally plays someone not a bubble-head. Driver almost steals the show while it is a relief to see Charles Grodin return to the big screen. In a non-comedic role, he turns a morsel of meat into a steak.

The seamless, ever-shifting tone in the film, from loopy to tart humor to drama is Baumbach's trademark.

But in spite of my praise for the film's qualities, it is still a Noah Baumbach film and I must say I've never been a fan. His film, as his others, can be amusing but there is something always missing that keeps his work from being fully realized; as if they only exist as interesting bits and parts. While We're Young felt like something substantial when I first walked out of the theater, but shaking off the pixie dust, I found his film had little resonance.

It may be a hit in the art house movie circuit, but I myself remain unimpressed. I wouldn't dissuade anyone from seeing it and in fact, I might encourage viewing if the alternatives are Chappie or The Second Best Marigold Hotel. But if Crimes and Misdemeanors happens to be playing on T.V., well...

A Million Ways to Die in the West

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, Neil Patrick Harris, and Wes Studi

One wouldn't see Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West for the sweeping vistas or characters with contradictions and dark, ulterior motives usually found in John Ford westerns. But if you happened to be looking for a film that lampoons westerns with crudely-served scatalogical humor, or skewers the prevailing myths of the old west in the same manner, then A Million Ways to Die in the West is what you're looking for.

From an original script by MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, A Million Ways to Die in the West tells a revisionist, deconstructive story of the west that is gleefully anachronistic. One knows what one is in for with Seth MacFarlane, particularly from the theatrical trailer, so no illusions about sophisticated humor, please.

Set in Arizona in the 1880s', Seth MacFarlane plays a cowardly sheep-farmer named Albert who detests everything about living in the frontier and says so in a soliloquy itemizing the kind of things that can kill you in the west in a way that is more perspective-from-the-future. It is a running gag in the film that Albert is a terrible sheep-farmer, as his herd is usually scattered all about, including the roof of his home.

Albert is in love with his sweetheart Louise (Amanda Seyfried) but the relationship sours when she grows tired of his character flaws and his inability to be a competent sheep-farmer. She falls in love with the town dandy, Foy (Neil Patrick Harris) who owns a shop that serves men with mustaches. Albert's lack of facial hair is a subtle jab at his lack of masculinity, which Foy exploits one day when Albert wanders in the mustache shop. MacFarlane always cuts a strange figure in movies with his bizarre, blemishless, alabaster complexion but it serves him well here; his smooth skin a comic reminder that a hairless face is something to be avoided in the frontier west

Unable to win Louise back, Albert is helped by a tough, tall, beautiful blonde named Anna who enters the town to rescue her brother from the jailhouse. Anna is married to the most ruthless, intimidating gunfighter named Clinch (Liam Neeson) who discovers his wife has kissed Albert, which leads to a High Noon-like confrontation later in the story. In the meantime, Anna helps Albert to overcome his love for Louise.

The story is secondary, most of the time, to the sight gags and jokes about the old west and the culture. One of them-and an amusing one-is the talk about having one's picture taken and how noone is supposed to smile. Albert shares a story about how he heard someone in Texas actually smiled during a photo, which seems outlandish and unbelievable to Anna and Albert. Another involves Albert's best friend Edward (Giovanni Ribisi), a morally upstanding young man who refuses to bed his fiancee Ruth (Sarah Silverman) before their wedding though she is a town prostitute who is visited at least ten times a day by clients--a fact known to everyone and Edward alike. It is quite funny to listen to Edward and Ruth talk wholesomely about saving themselves for marriage then hear her called gruffly by a saloon patron upstairs for sex, to which she promptly and dutifully complies; leaving Edward sitting pathetically at the table. The jokes are hit and miss and for the latter half of the movie, the story's almost serious narrative kills the momentum of the comedy as if MacFarlane forgot the movie is supposed to be a raunchy farce.

A Million Ways to Die in the West has its inspired moments but they seem too scarce. I'm not averse to humor dealing with bodily functions but films like MacFarlane's seem to use it as a crutch; betraying the famine of ideas that must have beset the screenwriting. A scene involving a duel between Foy and Albert, which ends up with the former defecating in the street seems borrowed by scores of gross-out comedies, including the recent Bridesmaids.

The cast rides along with the raunch and silliness. Sarah Silverman is quite amusing, as is Wes Studi's Cochise and Neil Patrick Harris with his foppish, annoying, handlebar mustache.

The film does have its John Ford, sweeping vistas of the desert southwest, which are breathtaking and unusual for a farce like MacFarlane's.

It made me chuckle at times but not enough. The film is one more missed opportunity but I've seen worse, which isn't exactly olympian praise but hardly a categorical dismissal. I'd like to see him try again, but next time remember to be more generous doling out the gags.