The Tao of Ted

[MovieBob]

The Tao of Ted

MovieBob takes a look at one of his favorite films of the summer, Ted.

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[Moeez]

"Oh no, my precious Godzilla!" Bob can come off as such a knee-jerk geek at times. They probably picked that director (Gareth Edwards) because he can do effects on the cheap with stunning results (see Monsters ending), so he'll know how to keep the budget of Godzilla on track.

Can't be worse than the Matthew Broderick version.

The best comedy this year (it's been an awful one for it) was 21 Jump Street.

 

[Falseprophet]

I don't know, Bob. Much as I'm happy for Ted's success, will it really have an effect on big-budget, splashy SFX summer tentpole blockbusters? Ted's a bromance/comedy, and many of those have managed to be pretty profitable and popular without being sequels or licensing old IPs.

Meanwhile, 2 years ago, a smart film with a blockbuster-sized budget, major special effects, fairly high-calibre cast and big idea concept based on an unlicensed, non-sequel original IP called "Inception" opened in the middle of a summer that also saw the likes of sequels Iron Man 2, Toy Story 3 and Predators, and licensed fare like The A-Team and The Last Airbender, and managed to be one of the top 10 moneymakers that year--it made Harry Potter-level money. And yet, Hollywood has not tried to make another "Inception".

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Well, hope you're right Bob.
I guess we'll see in the next few years or so. That's all I can say without bring the mood down.

 

[gardian06]

Dear Bob

the success of Ted had nothing to do with the cult like fans of the creators of Family Guy, nothing really. a group so devoted that they were able to convince Fox to bring the show back. I mean Fox a station that is willing to debunk every semblance of understanding of what is "popular" because it had the gall to make fun of them to many times.

 

[LonelyWizzard]

I really liked Ted, and I agree that it could be the start of a promising trend, but you should consider the possibility that mainstream audiences (particularly adolescent to early-twenties-males) saw this as "the Family Guy-guy movie", rather than just an interesting original idea.

 

[ciancon]

I'm not really a fan of crude humour e.g. The Inbetweeners I went into Ted not expecting to love it. But the very last joke is f***ing hilarious!

 

[IndomitableSam]

... I liked Monsters. I randomly found it on free VOD, had no idea what it was, and enjoyed it thoroughly as a great suprise. It wasn't great when comparing it to other films, but when going through the list of VOD movies and thinking it's another peice of crap basically made for tv thing with a cast I'd never seen before, I liked it. It's stayed on the VOD lists for a long time now and I've recommended it to a few people, too.

 

[LobsterFeng]

Haven't seen Ted. All I know is that every speck of advertising I saw for it told me nothing about it except that "it was made by the dude that made Family Guy!"

Plus in this day and age wouldn't it be more original to make an original comedy that isn't rated R? Because those seem the hardest to come by these days, unless I'm just not looking hard enough.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

The movie also seemed to me like sort of a send-up of movies like Alvin and the Chipmunks and Hop, where a grown man gets paired up with CG talking animals and hijinks ensue. Both by being an adult comedy and by being genuinely more mature (something you could never accuse any of McFarlane's previous work of).

I don't get how being a "proudly R-rated comedy" that got popular is somehow a big shocker, though. Those have been a big thing since forever, and haven't been on any sort of decline that I know of. Am I missing something here?

 

[cerebus23]

I don't get how being a "proudly R-rated comedy" that got popular is somehow a big shocker, though. Those have been a big thing since forever, and haven't been on any sort of decline that I know of. Am I missing something here?

There has been a real lack of 'Hard R' movies lately or at least an abundance of movies that were very obviously ham-strung by being told to be a PG13.

As to Why. The answer is very simple; a movie executive will fund a project but his box-factory logic will lead him to think the film will to need to "Appeal to all audiences" in order to work. They will then phone up the director/ producer and tell them they want the film to be PG-13 so "More people will go see it because business and stuff" or else the movie does not get made.

The original script then gets tossed out of the window along with the director's and writer's will to live. The studio then Vetos any jokes/ scenes it find 'troubling for the rating' and end up with a muddled, unfunny, badly cut, homogenized piece of shit with the meddling studio's fingerprints all over it.

The film then bombs because, by trying to appeal to all audiences, it appeals to none of them. The director then gets blamed and so does the decision to fund an original idea. The Executives then scream at poor mister director and wonder why he made such a bad, commercially unviable movie. He then goes on to fund a 'sure fire' project, a Xena warrior princess movie directed by Micheal Bay and starring Nicki Minaj.

And thus the U.S. studio system is safe from original ideas for another day.

I like this, glass half empty kind guy i guess? made me lol.

So much garbage comes out of hollywood though, it is not hard to see how this worst case stuff happens all the time. I know we hear about it from time to time.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Couldn't avoid taking another dig at that great movie Amazing Spider-Man could you Bob?

 

[katsabas]

Bob knew that The Avengers would not suck ? Mega-ultra-lie but what the hell. Haven't seen Ted yet but if it is considered one of the year's surprises, I shall.

Fun fact: the captcha actually required me to describe the Neutrogena brand of cosmetics in which ever way I prefer. Weeeeeeeeeeird...

 

[daibakuha]

I miss R rated movies, hopefully we will see a bit of renaissance with Ted and Dredd (hopefully Dredd does well enough), more than 1 movie has been gutted in order for it to maintain a PG-13.