Ted

Expectations:
As everyone knows, Ted was sold on the fact that it is the creation of Seth McFarlane of Family Guy fame. Honestly, I am not a huge fan of Family Guy. It is funny, but it has too many stupid, stupid moments for me. However, there is no denying that McFarlane and crew are geniuses when it comes to creating stories and characters. Because I knew of McFarlane's genius, I knew that I would be pleased with the outcome of Ted. The trailer was hilarious... The idea was amazing... And there was even a great cast. The only unsure thing was whether or not McFarlane could create a complete story with some substance over the course of one and a half hours.

Plot:
Much to my surprise, there was a fairly deep plot for a comedy. Actually, it was too deep. There was this huge attempt to establish some sort of emotional connection to the characters, which works in some comedies. However, it did not work with Ted. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't awful, but it would have been much better if they had gone with the straight up raw, dirty comedic approach. It is just so hard to take a talking teddy bear seriously.

Characters:
While the connection or plot between the characters was not so great, the individual characters were, for the most part, decent. The only big problem I had character-wise was that Ted was not quite the center of attention. It really felt like John (Mark Wahlberg) was the main character. I have nothing wrong with Mark Wahlberg, but, when you have a character as great as Ted, you have to run with that 100%.

Negatives: As I have said before, Mila Kunis rarely impresses me (save Friends with Benefits), and she let me down once again, as Lori Collins, in Ted. I don't know why, but I just don't like her! Lori's boss, Rex (played by Joel McHale), was probably the worst character of the entire film. While I don't usually care for Kunis, I find Joel McHale quite funny, so I was a bit surprised. Finally, Donny, played by Giovanni Ribisi, was an extremely low point plot-wise. Donny shouldn't have been in the film at all, but oh well.

Positives: As expected, Ted (voice by Seth McFarlane) stole the show as far as characters are concerned. He was a brilliant creation, and I wish I was half the genius that McFarlane is. Aside from Ted, there were a couple of other performances that I thought impressive. Patrick Warburton, as Guy, and Sam Jones, as himself, added a great amount of comedic relief to the attempt at a serious plot. However, there weren't that many great characters, further proving the need to focus on Ted.

Conclusion:
I just want to say how excited I was to see billions of people at the movie theater this past weekend. While my expectations for Ted were high, I had no clue that it would make $54 million in its first weekend. Kudos to America for almost making me run out of gas trying to find a parking spot! As far as Ted goes, I wasn't completely impressed. Let's just say that, if I would have run out of gas, it wouldn't have been worth it. The movie was funny, don't get me wrong. It just could have been much, much better. With the great amount of money made, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Ted sequel or a similar production from McFarlane and crew. Maybe they will learn from past mistakes and make up for it the second time through. I give Ted 2.77 out of 5 stars.

Friends With Benefits

Expectations:
All the talk going in to this movie was how it was exactly like No Strings Attached. Judging from the trailers of the two films, that is very true, but I have never seen No Strings Attached, giving me a clean slate to think upon during this movie. I really thought that the movie would be purely comedy. It's obvious that a love connection would spark between Mila and Justin at some point in the film, but I expected hilarity up until that point. I am not a huge fan of Mila Kunis, but she is 3,000 times funnier than Natalie Portman, hence my watching Friends With Benefits rather than No Strings Attached. Did I expect great things from this movie? No, hence my going to watch Captain America first. But I am always up for a good laugh.

Before I move on to the plot, I would like to let all readers know that my girlfriend was absolutely disgusted by the abbreviation FWB. She told me atleast three times, so I figured that everyone should know how awefully dumb it is to abbreviate movie titles.

Plot:
As is the case with most people, I go see a comedy for one reason... to laugh. For the first twenty minutes or so of Friends with Benefits, I didn't find myself doing much of this. Then, suddenly, the movie began to pick up in humor. But once the funny business was over, the plot became very serious. As I said before, the obvious love connection sparks, and mixed emotions get in the way. I am usually ok with the relationships in comedies, yet this one began to turn into more of a chick flick as time went on. Not only is there tension in the relationship between the main characters, but also Dylan (Justin Timberlake) has a rough family history and a sick dad. Now I don't know about you, but I don't want to see much emotion from a man in an R-rated comedy. Now that I have hated some, I do think that the approach was good and the idea brilliant. If they hadn't played up the comedy so so much in the trailers, I would have loved the family connections. This movie was actually thought up before No Strings Attached, so I will give them credit for turning this great idea into a film. The execution could have been better, the plot could have been less predictable, but the idea is genius.

Characters:
As I said before, I am not a huge fan of Mila Kunis. I am one of the biggest That 70's Show fans you could ever meet, and I believe she was the weak link in the greatest TV comedy of all time. With that being said, I was impressed by her performance in Friends with Benefits. I do think she really utilized Timberlake's talents to her advantage and made me laugh multiple times. Justin Timberlake really wasn't as funny as normal, mostly because he was held back by his family issues. I did think the chemistry between Kunis and Timberlake was obvious, and I would not be surprised if this relationship carried over into the real world.

Best Character: Dylan's dad, played by Richard Jenkins, was really a great character. I know I said that I wanted comedy, but he really did a good job of adding the drama that was desired by the filmmakers.

Worst Character: Shaun White, played by Shaun White, was completely useless. There was a really hilarious joke about him looking like a girl, but other than that I was baffled as to why he was in the film.

Conclusion:
Friends with Benefits was not exactly what I expected, but it was pretty good. I did laugh a good bit and also felt something for the characters, particularly Dylan. I have mixed emotions about the film. The plot was predicted by our waiter before watching the movie, which shows its depth. Even with the weakness of the plot, I do still love the idea, and my hat goes off to whoever thought to turn this into a movie. Friends with Benefits gets 2.46 out of 5 stars. However, I do want to reserve my rights to change my opinion on the film daily.