The pot-smoking, potty-mouthed Ted is back, but the thrill and the novelty have fled.
When he's at his best, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane marries pop cultural references, anti-PC bluster and curveball musical numbers to humorous effect. At his least effective, he does precisely the same thing without the lulz. Ted 2 is not entirely devoid of comic merit. But it is way off the pace set by its predecessor.
Between too few effective jokes, viewers must contend with an elaborate and dull plot. Ted and his appropriately trashy new wife, Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth), are denied a chance to adopt a baby when the courts rule that the fuzzy bong-handler is not a person, but property.
Enter non-hotshot lawyer Amanda Seyfried, who brings all the comic flair that made her performance in A Million Ways to Die in the West so utterly forgettable.
There follows a pointless road trip, a pointless romantic subplot between Seyfried and Wahlberg, a pointless Seyfried rendition of Norah Jones's Mean 'Ol Moon, and several underwritten courtroom scenes. Bongs are toked. Busby Berkeley is imitated. Flash Gordon's Sam J Jones cameos again. So does Patrick Warburton. Wahlberg does his best Boston bawl.
Ted manages a couple of off-colour remarks about sickle cell anaemia, autism and (sigh) the Kardashians. But marriage, alas, has curtailed his bad behaviour. This is not the same teddy who won over audiences in 2012. This is a teddy who can’t cut loose from under the weight of a meandering plot.
First A Million Ways to Die in the West, now this? Why, Seth, why?
