Conservative watchdog Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center, (enjoy one of his Hi-larious tweets, here) surveyed the media landscape and concluded that public enemy number one is Seth MacFarlane’s new talking teddy bear comedy, “Ted.“
To wit (with our annotations)
“Seth MacFarlane, whose $100 million contract with Fox makes him the highest paid TV writer in history,1 is now trying to take over the cineplex, with the same old shtick.2 You could pluck his oeuvre3 out of the summer movie-preview articles without any difficulty. His was the one where the teddy bear comes to life and becomes a profane slacker who practically lives inside a bong and hires hookers in groups.4
The movie’s title is “Ted.” It won its opening weekend with a $54 million gross at the box office. Clearly, MacFarlane’s fans cannot consume enough of his pop-culture sewage.5
“Ted” is a fitting metaphor for MacFarlane himself. He is the magical creation everyone in Hollywood seems to find as cute as a furry stuffed animal. He’s made his fortune by putting the crudest, most offensive utterances in the mouths of babies, dogs and completely idiotic man-children. Hollywood is never having to grow up.6
So the idea that this movie would center on a real man-boy named John Bennett who must grow up seems odd. Why grow up?7 Perpetual adolescence clearly has worked for some people.8 Here again, MacFarlane is Ted, holding back the real slackers by keeping them in a state of mental pimple-popping for his own personal gain.9
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This is the plot: As a boy, Bennett has no friends, so on Christmas night he wishes on a shooting star that his teddy bear could really talk to him and be his best friend — and then it happens. But it’s supposedly much funnier when the movie fast forwards 27 years, and Bennett and his teddy bear are pot-smoking losers who watch too much television.10
Now as one of Hollywood’s most vicious atheists, it would seem like quite a sellout for MacFarlane to make a movie with a “magic wishes” plot centering on Christmas night, no less.11 This movie pounds away with the usual and very tired Whack-a-Mole jokes about sex, drugs and bodily functions, presumably because it can’t really plot its way out of a paper bag.12 Even the wish-upon-a-star thing is as old as “Pinocchio.”13
Ask the film critics. A.O. Scott of The New York Times believes some overgrown spoiled brat in Tinseltown is phoning it in. “The sin of ‘Ted’ is not that it is offensive but that it is boring, lazy and wildly unoriginal. If Triumph the Insult Comic Dog ever got a hold of Ted, there would be nothing left but a pile of fluff and a few scraps of fur.”14
That’s our cultural elite for you.15 There’s nothing wrong with being offensive, but there’s something dreadfully wrong with being boring and unoriginal.”16
1. Easy, cowboy, you’re dangerously close to saying something negative about Fox. 2. Trying? Succeed, he has, hmm? 3. That’s fancy French movie critic talk i.e. his opinions on movies are as chichi as anyone’s.. Please, say “auteur” next, please, please! 4. See also, every movie comedy of the past 10 years. 5. Including, one assumes, you, Brent Bozell? You did see this, right? You wouldn’t write a movie review without seeing it first, would you? Would you? 6. How dare people in the entertainment industry, entertain us, entertainingly! Your youthful exuberance is…intolerable! 7. Why grow up? Obviously, to gain the maturity necessary to attack an R rated comedy about a talking teddy bear. That’s what adulthood MEANS. 8. In MacFarlane’s case, the liberal fascists in Washington force every American to watch his entire “oeuvre”. Perhaps you’ve noticed, the off switch on your remote will not work when Family Guy is on. 9. Because no one would even THINK of smoking weed and blobbing out in front of the tube if it weren’t for Seth MacFarlane. Such are his superhuman powers. 10. Years of testing at the Comedy Propulsion Labs concluded that in purely technical terms, yes, it actually IS much funnier. And again with the TV bashing? See note #1 11. Sellout (noun): What one calls others who succeed in a realm far beyond one’s own capacities 12. He’s got a point. For instance, Brent Bozell is being pretty damn funny here without even trying. 13. Borrow a dictionary. Turn to the word, “parody.” You’re welcome. 14. Watch what happens here: Brent Bozell pilfers a quote from a real movie critic to bolster his own prejudices… 15. …and then insults him with the moldiest right wing meme of them all. Degree of difficulty—9.5. Annnnd, he sticks it! 16. Projection (noun): The attribution of one’s own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others. See also, Wrong, Dreadfully.
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