In 2012, the world fell head over heels for the charms of Ted ,one adorable, albeit incredibly foul mouthed, teddy bear to the tune of almost $550 million in global ticket sales.
With his classic, furry good looks, unparallelled swagger and penchant for pot-fuelled humour and sexually charged antics, an unlikely leading man catapulted a small comedy about a stoner dude and his best friend to its status as the highest-grossing original 'R'-rated comedy of all time.
After Ted's phenomenal success worldwide, a sequel was inevitable and Seth Macfarlane returns as writer, director and voice star of Ted 2. Macfarlane did not plan on making Ted 2. He admits that he had a great deal of fondness for the characters and the genre lends itself to limitless ideas.
"It's a little easier with a comedy, because comedy is generally character based, as opposed to premise based, and in a way you treat it like a TV series. You have these characters that can be put in any situation, and we felt that Ted and John could sustain a totally different story. They were very strong in and of themselves, and so it was conceivable to do a sequel that would be worthwhile. So, it was fun to go in and figure out what we could do with these characters that would be completely different from what we did in the last movie."
Mark Wahlberg also returns as John Bennett, and the thunder buddies for life are entering into uncharted territory when it's time to legalise Ted.
When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts declares Ted not to be a person, but property, he is fired from his job at the grocery store and summarily informed that his marriage has been annulled.
Wahlberg is a great actor with superb comic timing; he is not afraid to take risks and sets the child within free. He has a natural and likeable sense of comedy that allows his interaction with Ted to be authentic; we cannot help but bond with this dynamic underdog-duo, who takes life by the horns and makes the most of the worst scenario, always allowing the positive to surface.
In Ted 2, Wahlberg and Ted are joined by Amanda Seyfried, a medical-marijuana aficionado named Samantha L Jackson who supports their mission and helps him sue the state and win him the rights that he deserves.
All they need to do is prove that Ted is not just a beer-swilling, pot-infused stuffed teddy bear, but actually a person who deserves the same freedoms as any other beer-swilling, pot-infused American.
For the sequel Macfarlane reunited with Ted writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild to pen the next chapter.
It was an unlikely 19th-century legal inspiration that would move the writing partners to tell the second chapter in Ted's tale. Wild shares: "Seth was reading a book on the Dred Scott case and came up with this idea: 'Since Ted is a stuffed animal that came to life, what if he finds out he's not a citizen? What if he's not considered a person and just considered property?' He wanted to explore that and to find out if there was anything interesting there - or if this would just be a boring court case movie with a couple of jokes peppered here and there. We ended up going off of this idea, which was modelled after the case."
Macfarlane extends a theme from the first movie, offering that as amazing as it would be if a teddy bear came to life, at some point people would start to see it as the norm: "Human beings are very quickly adaptable. Probably fairly soon after Ted came to life, people would be like, 'Oh well, that happened. Moving on.' We kept to that idea, and we figured that eventually the subject of Ted's legal status would come up."
But the director surmises that this level of comfort would be tempered with instinctual suspicion. He says: "Human beings are inherently tribal. To our own detriment, we have a need to put people into little groups. There probably would be some resistance to let a talking teddy bear into our club, in the same way there's resistance to let gay people into the club and-at a certain point in time-let black people into the club. Amanda's character has a line in the movie where she says that in every civil rights conflict, we're only able to recognise the just point of view years after the fact. We never see it while it's going on. We always think this time is different."
With the serious 'throughline' as an inspiration for the film, Sulkin admits that it was his love of an inescapable television show that spurred on much of the comedy's dialogue: "I've watched Law & Order ever since it's been on. I know all the legalese and everything you hear them say over and over again in court, but it's funnier when it's this foul-mouthed teddy bear involved in a serious legal drama. That was a focal point for me as we were writing the script, making sure that those moments rang true."
A great advantage that the writers have is that their co-star is an animated one. This allows them to stay as current as possible with dialogue and topical jokes. Wild explains: "Because Ted is animated, you can write new lines for him. Because it's just lip assignments, when his mouth is moving, you can sneak anything in there if the timing is right. Seth is constantly asking for something more contemporary. This allowed us to write jokes right up until several weeks before the actual movie is released."
Ted2 offers ideal entertainment for those looking for fun escapism with a naughty edge. In an age where humans are stripped of their identity, Ted 2 allows us to take a closer look at what makes us tick, and how easy it is for us to lose our humanness.
Three lucky Bizcommunity readers can win a Ted 2 hamper that includes the original Ted DVD as well as teddy bears by sending an email to az.oc.oidutsgnitirw@leinad.
