Seth MacFarlane successfully parlays his TV career to film with Ted, a fun story about two long time friends. One being Mark Walberg, the other a teddy bear come to life.

Ted holds a lot of ties to Family Guy, with a lot of the same cast and a similar sense of humor. There’s not as much “cut away to random act” for laughs and there are zero show tunes which probably explain how this movie did so well (half a billion world wide). It’s a good story that’s held together with great and funny characters. The idea is goofy but the filmmakers know this, acknowledge it and make it work. The CG effects that bring Ted alive onscreen is also a huge factor. He looks like a real character interacting with real people in the real world which can’t be understated at how important that is. If he looked fake it would have been distacting and taken a lot away from the movie since he’s in almost every shot. There’s a handful of weird looking parts where he doesn’t match the lighting in the room, but on the whole he’s really impressive.

I’m a fan of Seth MacFarlane for the most part, some of his shtick is dumb, but there is some hilarious stuff in this movie. It’s not gross out humor, but there is plenty of cursing, insults, sex and drug humor. Some of it is played out, some of it hits the mark. It’s one of the better comedies I’ve seen and even outside of that, it’s a great movie. It won’t appeal to everyone, but those people probably aren’t much fun to be around anyway.