All Things Super

Part 1: How The Avengers Took Over the World

When I was a kid, I had a Captain America action figure. I don’t remember ever reading a Captain America comic book but I liked that action figure so much, my next birthday party was Captain America themed. I liked him because… I liked him. That was all there was to it. I just knew he was awesome, maybe even instinctively. You didn’t have to sell Little Steve on the idea.

Leaving the theater after seeing Thor last summer, I felt as though I had been handed one of those cheap plastic toys you get in a Happy Meal with “Collect All Four” printed on the package. There wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with the movie (and I’ll admit Marvel Studios is currently making some impressively flashy toys) but it left a bad taste in my mouth. The movie didn’t seem to care whether or not I enjoyed it, only that I had bought a ticket.

Well, not just one ticket. Six tickets (and counting!) if you’re keeping score. Each Marvel Avengers movie is entwined in a massive and knotty marketing campaign as staggering in relative size and ambition as the Large Hadron Collider. They have all been part of an ambitious setup building to The Avengers, which is really just a setup for The Avengers 2 anyways. And so we wait with bated breath for the next movie, which will then tell us what exciting movie is in store for us next. And so on.

Now, I’m being cynical and probably not giving these movies their full due. I’ve enjoyed most of them (Robert Downey Jr. has successfully carried two Iron Man movies, and Captain America had a giddy charm to it). Marvel’s mega-marketing scheme would hardly have paid off if the films weren’t entertaining. Still, there’s a nagging corporate agenda at work here that, at least for me, leaked into The Avengers and kept me from enjoying it. The movie never tried to win me over; I had already bought a ticket so why would it?

Part 2: Your Friendly Neighborhood Blockbuster

A number of people I have spoken to had similar feelings about The Amazing Spider-Man and several critics wrote perfectly reasonable reviews that mirror my own reaction to The Avengers. The latest Spidey adventure is a clear studio cash-grab; in order to keep the rights to the character, Sony had to make another movie. It is a faithful reworking of Sam Raimi’s 2002 film with just enough superficial differences to distinguish it from its predecessor – a new villain, a new cutie for Peter Parker to kiss – but it breaks no new ground.

What can I say? I fell for it anyways. Give me two likable romantic leads and throw them in a zippy energetic action movie and I’m happy.

But is this the best we can hope to get from superhero movies in 2012 and beyond? New versions of the same old and a fresh, young cast to replace the actors who have outgrown their roles? I don’t have the answer and as long as superhero movies are as fun as The Amazing Spider-Man, I’ll be too busy having a good time to even ask.

Part 3: The Dark Plight of the Superserious

There is, however, at least one filmmaker who believes superhero movies can give audiences more than disposable entertainment. Christopher Nolan has done an admirable job taking superheroes to a whole new level. In his hands, Batman, who had been languishing throughout the 90s in increasingly goofy (and decreasingly watchable) movies, gained some much-needed emotional heft and narrative sophistication.

Batman was always a childhood favorite of mine – Saturday mornings, I was reliably glued to the TV watching reruns of Batman: The Animated Series – and Christopher Nolan’s movies take the character every bit as seriously as I did when I was a kid. 2005’s Batman Begins and 2008’s The Dark Knight (still the high-water mark of the genre) are dark, brooding stories but they’re also great popcorn movies. Little Steve would have loved them.

With The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan has taken his series to its inevitable conclusion. Most everyone I know has been satisfied by its ending. It is a breathtaking movie and certainly one of the best-looking summer blockbusters in years. As Gotham City descends into anarchy in the dead of winter, its snow-covered streets are as gorgeous as they are ominous.

But Christopher Nolan gets so caught up in his bleak tragedy of a dying city that he neglects Batman. There is a half-baked love triangle and a full circle moment about falling to learn to get back up again, but these inclusions feel peripheral to the main story. The movie loads one grim development on top of another until it risks collapsing under its own weight. It may well be a satisfying finale to a gloomy series but somewhere in the middle of it, Little Steve walked off and started playing with a different toy.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/25/12

REVIEW: The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises (2012): Dir. Christopher Nolan. Written by: Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. Story by: David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan. Based on characters created by: Bob Kane. Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Morgan Freeman. Rated PG-13 (Gloomy brooding and brawling). Running time: 165 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Eight years have passed in Gotham City since the events of The Dark Knight, when the Joker plagued the city, turned Harvey Dent into Two-Face and raked in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Gotham is a safer place now: the streets have been rid of organized crime and there is no need for the Batman, that masked vigilante the police mistakenly accused of murdering Harvey Dent.

On the streets, however, there is still belief in the Bat. The streets of Gotham also, for the first time in the series, actually feel part of a real city, one with food vendors and school playgrounds, suited investment bankers and cabbies. And director Christopher Nolan populates his city with some intriguing, well-developed characters.

Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is back, a tired man who’s probably getting too old for this sort of thing but just believes in it too much to quit. Gotham is in “peace time,” as one officer puts it, but Gordon has seen it at war and remains wary. It is his diehard commitment to justice that caused his wife to take off with the kids, leaving him alone to defend a city that does not currently need him but could at any moment.

Perhaps he is not alone though. John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young and ambitious officer, appears to be on hand to pick up the Commissioner’s torch of idealism. As an orphan, Blake looked up to Bruce Wayne, the parentless billionaire, but even more so, he idolized Batman. He has since lost faith in Wayne but still believes in Batman.

Speaking of Batman, where is he? He mysteriously vanished from Gotham following Dent’s death, we are told. (He also mysteriously vanishes for sizable chunks of this movie.) The man behind the suit, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), is still alive, living in self-imposed exile in Wayne Manor. Tending to him as always is the Wayne family butler, Michael Caine. Er, I mean, Alfred.

There is also Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a leather-clad femme fatale with hair so silky smooth you’d think she was strutting through a Pantene commercial. Selina is a cat burglar. She robs jewelry off the wealthy and while the movie is sneaky in the way it avoids flat-out calling her Catwoman, we know better by that sly, twinkling Hans Zimmer theme that accompanies her on the score in several scenes.

Coy though the movie is about her, she is one of the best parts of it. Ms. Hathaway is a nimble actress, both physically in combat scenes but even more so when playing the role of seductress, and she is a lot of fun to watch. She is the only glimmer of the wisecracking playfulness that was once (long ago) a hallmark of the superhero genre.

The rest of that freewheeling fun is buried deep under a heap of rubble by Bane (Tom Hardy), the joyless antagonist of The Dark Knight Rises. Bane is a terrorist who was excommunicated from the League of Shadows, that nefarious organization Batman worked so hard to defeat in Batman Begins. Bane, like Batman, wears a mask, except his only covers his mouth and distorts his British accent into a hissing Darth Vader-esque growl. This makes for an intimidating presence but also obscures roughly half the actor’s lines so that he sounds as though he is talking through a washing machine.

Bane seeks to burn Gotham to the ground and punish its citizens for their decadence. In turn, Christopher Nolan punishes us with an overlong and supremely decadent second half, which disappointingly goes on autopilot. The Dark Knight Rises is undoubtedly Mr. Nolan’s sloppiest script (he co-wrote it with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, from a story by David S. Goyer). It labors early on with expository backstory and neglects to surprise in its final act. The absence of surprise is the most lamentable aspect of this cheerless movie. Mr. Nolan is usually so good at keeping us on our toes; here he bores us by plodding through every plot point his characters have promised us will happen.

Much has been made of the dark tone Christopher Nolan adopts in his Batman films. That somber mood does play a crucial role in the success of the first two movies but even more important is the grandeur Mr. Nolan lends them. He treats these comic book stories as though they are classical myths.

But there is a fine line between grandeur and pretentiousness and The Dark Knight Rises hurtles right over it. Aside from Gordon and Blake (Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are Mr. Nolan’s two most valuable and underused assets), the movie is dominated not by people but by symbolic avatars used to bludgeon us over the head with the film’s thematic intent. Bane stands for anarchy. Batman stands for some vague notion of justice.

What made 2008’s The Dark Knight so much fun was its identity as a thrilling comic book movie elevated to the level of a crime epic. The Dark Knight Rises is all elevation and no entertainment. During that dreary slog of a second half, Christopher Nolan wants us to sit and be impressed by his movie, to be overcome with awe. I sat. I was impressed. Awe? Eh.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/20/12

REVIEW: Savages

Savages (2012): Dir. Oliver Stone. Written by: Shane Salerno, Don Winslow and Oliver Stone. Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir. Rated R (Brutal and bloody violence, cursing in English and Spanish, and a dash of sex and drugs). Running time: 131 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Lado Arroyo, played with vicious intensity by Benicio del Toro, prowls around like a rabid animal in Savages, Oliver Stone’s searing new thriller about the intersections between a Mexican drug cartel and the marijuana business in Southern California.

An enforcer for an infamous crime lord (Salma Hayek), Lado is an electrical rod, giving the film a jolt of energy whenever it starts to falter. Mr. del Toro’s performance might even embody the movie’s wild, multifaceted personality in miniature. Lado is brutally violent and misogynistic, and Benicio del Toro plays him with a cavalier demeanor that could be cold and calculating. Or it could be the menacing quiet of an absolute psychopath. When he interrogates people and gives them his calm, leering stare, it is hard to tell whether he has a plan or is making it up as he goes along.

The same may be said of director Oliver Stone, who also shares writing credit here with Shane Salerno and Don Winslow (who wrote the novel from which this film has been adapted). There are moments when Savages comes just shy of the grandeur of Martin Scorsese’s mob movies. But even the most frenetically stylized work from Scorsese bears an unmistakable mark of the director’s command over his material. Oliver Stone’s style is looser, relying on handheld cameras and quick editing. It can create an intoxicating effect but has its limitations too. Certain sequences in Savages have a woozy power but just as often the film feels as though it could spiral out of control.

Through the narration of a Laguna surfer girl named Ophelia (Blake Lively), we are introduced to Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch), who run a highly profitable business growing and selling the best weed in the world. Ben is the brains of the operation, though he would probably prefer to be called the spirit and soul of it. He is a longhaired and peace-loving young man, a Buddhist who has just returned from a humanitarian trip in Indonesia.

Chon, on the other hand, is the muscle of the business. An ex-Navy SEAL, he does the dirty work for his best pal – the usual busting down doors and collecting owed money from clients – and he carries with him a fair amount of mental baggage from the war.

Ophelia (“O,” as she goes by) has given her heart to both men, and all three seem pretty happy about that arrangement. She spends some nights with Ben, others with Chon and, on at least one stoned evening, both at once.

But their blissful paradise – an impressive villa overlooking the beach – can only last so long. A representative from the aforementioned Mexican drug cartel (Demián Bichir) visits them (having first sent a rather intimidating video of decapitated heads). He explains that his boss would like to go into business with them. Ben and Chon will teach the cartel’s workers the secrets of the trade and over the course of several years, then they will hand over the business entirely for a considerable payout. The deal is really more of a command though; Ben and Chon have little choice in the matter.

Things get complicated, however, as situations like this often do. There are kidnappings and ransoms, heated negotiations, infighting among the cartel, and a DEA agent (John Travolta) who has his hands in just about every piece of the pie imaginable. Whipping it all together in a frenzy that occasionally flirts with incoherence, Oliver Stone delivers an exhilarating genre picture that only touches peripherally on political issues that are often at the forefront of his movies.

The film also has a wicked sense of humor and a willingness to poke fun at itself. When a character says the movie’s title once, it’s tacky. When three different characters say the title over the course of the movie, the filmmakers are clearly having fun.

But Savages never quite finds its footing; it’s too busy running headlong into its next crazy idea. Portions of the movie are so frantic and energized that when the movie does slow down, we start to lose interest.

Still, Savages has plenty of good scenes and a handful of great ones that redeem its shortcomings. Not the least of these come from a superb cast. Benicio del Toro is a compulsively watchable force, as is Salma Hayek as Elena Sánchez, the woman pulling all the strings. In one of the best scenes, she unleashes a bilingual tirade on a few of her henchmen, swearing only in subtitled Spanish. Ms. Hayek balances the over-the-top with the understated, revealing occasional glimmers of tenderness in the fiery cartel boss.

John Travolta reminds audiences what a commanding presence he has, going toe to toe with Benicio del Toro in one crackling scene, another highlight of the film. With so much scene-stealing talent it would be easy to miss strong work from the three young leads. The best of them may be Taylor Kitsch, who pretty much only has one gear, angry, but he makes it compelling.

The ending, unfortunately, is a letdown. At first it seems lazy, then it tries to do too much and ultimately peters out with a trite voiceover from Blake Lively. (When a movie has a character reciting a Webster’s definition of the title, it’s a sign the filmmakers don’t know how to end it.) But this only briefly dampens the impact of the movie’s audacious heights, which burn on in spite of its flaws.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/16/12

REVIEW: To Rome With Love

To Rome With Love (2012): Written and directed by: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Alessandra Mastronardi, Ellen Page and Alessandro Tiberi. Rated R (Various infidelities). Running time: 121 minutes.

 2 stars (out of four)

Woody Allen’s tour of Europe continues with To Rome With Love, a collection of vignettes about tourists and locals in Rome that feels less like a love letter to the city than a justification for Woody’s traveling. The film, though not without its amusing moments, is an awkward jumble of comic sketches that fail to add up to a cohesive whole.

We meet Hayley (Alison Pill), a New Yorker on holiday for the summer, who asks for directions from Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), a dashing Roman. After no time at all (more specifically, after a brief sight-seeing montage), the two are engaged and arrange a meeting of the future in-laws. Mr. Allen himself returns to acting playing his usual crotchety self and delivering some stale one-liners as Jerry, Hayley’s father.

Jerry is a retired classical music producer and when he overhears Michelangelo’s father (opera singer Fabio Armiliato) belting in the shower, he insists the man has a gift that must be shared with the world. This idea is met with sarcastic scorn from Jerry’s wife (Judy Davis) who shrewdly observes Jerry is simply bored and looking for an opportunity to relive the glory days. This storyline eventually peters out into a one-joke bit that is worth a chuckle the first time you see it but quickly gets old.

A characteristically animated Roberto Benigni stars in a similarly one-note story as an everyday joe who inexplicably becomes a national celebrity overnight. Paparazzi mob him outside his home: “What did you eat for breakfast?” they ask him in an excited commotion. “Do you take your bread toasted or untoasted?” And so on, and so on.

In another episode, a newlywed couple, Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) and Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi), get separated and subsequently embark on parallel sexual indiscretions; Milly with a movie star (Antonio Albanese) and Antonio with prostitute (a criminally underused Penélope Cruz). Their stories meander for a while in mildly farcical territory but don’t really go anywhere.

The only narrative that does progress and develop an actual arc features Jesse Eisenberg as Jack, a young architect living in Rome with his girlfriend Sally (a barely seen Greta Gerwig). Sally has invited her best friend Monica (Ellen Page), a notorious seductress, to stay over their place and visit. “Don’t fall in love with her,” she tells Jack, which is really another way of saying, “You’re going to fall in love with her.”

Eavesdropping on the developing love triangle is John (Alec Baldwin), a famed architect Jack recognizes on the street and invites to his apartment. John, as it turns out, once lived on this very block when he was Jack’s age. Indeed, Jack may even be a young incarnation of himself. (Or is John a future incarnation of Jack?) At any rate, Woody Allen has fun letting John stroll in and out of scenes like a one-man Greek chorus in Jack’s mind, warning him of the trouble he is about to get into while also conceding the inevitable. He was young once too and easily tempted by charming girls like Monica.

Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page are well suited to the fast-talking neuroses of Mr. Allen’s characters and though their dialogue is far from Mr. Allen’s best writing, the pair have a way of making their lines sound snappier than they actually are. This is Woody Allen Lite (he has crafted much more subtle and interesting tales of infidelity in the past) but it is still the best offering here.

The title of this movie is curious. Woody Allen’s last film, Midnight in Paris, told an enchanting story set in the City of Lights that also found plenty of time to indulge in the scenery. It evoked the magic of the city (literally) as well as Mr. Allen’s adoration of it. To Rome With Love feels obligatory. Often Woody Allen seems to be padding for time and he overwrites a lot of scenes, beating a joke into the ground or, worse, explaining why it’s funny. I’ve never been to Rome but I imagine it deserves better.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/9/12

REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012): Dir. Marc Webb. Written by: James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves. Story by: James Vanderbilt. Based on the comics by: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen and Sally Field. Rated PG-13 (No worse than a Saturday morning cartoon). Running time: 136 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Could it be the superhero genre is entering a period similar to, say, the western in its heyday, where originality is less important than deft execution of a sturdy formula? The Amazing Spider-Man is a bright and flashy reboot of the franchise, and more or less a remake of Sam Raimi’s 2002 film that kicked off Hollywood’s obsession with spandexed heroes ten summers ago.

In that intervening decade superhero movies have become increasingly bloated and out of hand, and I started to forget what it is I expect from them. The Amazing Spider-Man has a dashing and charming hero, a pretty girl and a bad guy to save her from. The movie is also marked with a cheerful levity; it doesn’t ham it up or anything but keeps in mind just how silly these movies are if you stop to think about them.

And you don’t have to think too much to enjoy The Amazing Spider-Man. The script, written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves, is clunky at times and rushes through a few key moments in the character’s early development. The previous telling of Spider-Man’s origin will be fresh in the minds of many and there are few surprises with regard to the basic story here. The surprises and pleasures of this movie instead come from director Marc Webb’s lightness of touch and the giddily fun moments he creates with his graceful cast.

Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a teenaged brainiac whose parents mysteriously left him in the care of his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) and disappeared when he was a boy. He is a skateboarding loner with a love of photography and who occupies one of the lower rungs of the high school social ladder.

Mr. Garfield plays Peter as a goodhearted showboat, awkward and a little angsty but more than ready to take on the world when the time comes. Even after he dons the suit, Mr. Garfield does not lose the tics and mannerisms of an overexcited adolescent. These particularly come out in Peter’s scenes with Gwen Stacey (the always lively Emma Stone), a girl at his school who he is crushing on big time. They share some awkward flirtation and these scenes are the best in the film.

Marc Webb’s debut was the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, the movie that revealed to America just how adorable Zooey Deschanel is, and he has a keen sensibility for the tone of these scenes. He gives his actors room to play, trusting that their onscreen chemistry will create a sweetly romantic atmosphere. Ms. Stone, a wonderfully subtle and immensely likable actress, understands her role – she is on hand to look cute and alternately cheer, gasp and smooch – and is no less appealing than usual, though she may be a bit underused.

Gwen works as an assistant for Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a scientist who believes the regenerative powers of reptiles holds the key to curing countless injuries, not the least of which is his own severed right arm. And now we have our bad guy. Dr. Connors is that familiar movie scientist; he is noble and wise and working on something momumental, the power of which he does not yet fully grasp. Perhaps inevitably, he becomes (spoiler alert!) a giant lizard.

Dr. Connors is of particular interest to Peter, whose father once worked alongside Connors on some rather sensational projects. One of these involves genetically altered spiders that shoot webs with the strength of industrial cables. I don’t need to tell you one of these little guys bites Peter while he’s poking around in Dr. Connors’s lab.

Before long, Peter has designed a tight-fitting red-and-blue suit and a mechanism that shoots webs (both introduced in the requisite training montages), and becomes a masked vigilante. This draws the ire of Gwen’s father, Captain George Stacey (Denis Leary), who naturally sets the entire police force on a manhunt to catch Spider-Man.

There is something almost classical about this film’s approach, as though it were paying tribute to the 2002 film. This is, of course, ridiculous. The original Spider-Man is hardly old and, yes, a franchise reboot is totally unnecessary but the gluttonous studioheads have demanded it into existence and, like it or not, here it is. This is a gleeful, dopey, discardable bit of summer entertainment but something about it kept me hooked.

Like the best Hollywood formulas, the superhero movie is designed to entertain. In The Amazing Spider-Man, all the pieces are in place and it works. With no end in sight for the genre’s box office domination, these movies will continue to be produced for at least another decade if not longer. Some of them will be awful, others will hopefully be great. This is a good one.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/7/12

REVIEW: Ted

Ted (2012): Dir. Seth MacFarlane. Written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild. Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel McHale and featuring the voice of Seth MacFarlane. Rated R (Drugs, booze, boobs and bad words). Running time: 106 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Immature manboys have all but taken over Hollywood comedies these days (though the occasional bridesmaid has been known to encroach on their territory). Part of the joke of Ted is that the overgrown child at the center of it spends all his time with a none-too-subtle symbol of his unflagging adolescence: a walking, talking, pot-smoking teddy bear.

Once upon a Christmas, a young boy named John wishes on a shooting star for his Teddy to come to life (he’s had no luck making friends with the neighborhood boys in the Boston suburbs). Sure enough, the next morning Teddy is alive, speaking freely in the high-pitched squeak of a Tickle-Me-Elmo, and he quickly becomes a media sensation.

Though all boys must grow up and every celebrity’s fame fades eventually, the bond between a boy and his bear is eternal and we catch up with John and Ted in the present day. Young John has filled into the bulky body of Mark Wahlberg and though Ted remains the same cuddly size, his voice has deepened into that of Seth MacFarlane’s. (Mr. MacFarlane, who created and provides voice work for Family Guy, directed and wrote this movie with ­­­­Family Guy writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild).

John works for a rental car company where his boss tells him he is a shoo-in for the soon to be vacated branch manager position. But responsibility isn’t nearly as appealing as lighting a bong with his plush pal.

John also lives with Lori (Mila Kunis), his girlfriend of four years. Lori is a woman of remarkable patience and understanding but can you blame her for wondering when John will actually grow up? Ms. Kunis is a good sport too. She’s a talented comedic actress and Seth MacFarlane presumably knows this, having brought her over from Family Guy. If he truly liked her though, he’d throw her a funny line once in a while. Lori is that familiar Freudian blend of hot girlfriend and doting mother figure that is a fixture in comedies like this. The plot requires her to push our lovable lug out of his juvenile rut and into the frightening world of adulthood.

But the looming threat of a bromance break-up is not the only thing facing John and Ted. A wildly over-the-tip Giovanni Ribisi shows up to steal a few scenes as a grade-A supercreep who wants to buy Ted, and Joel McHale makes an appearance as Lori’s smarmy boss. Now, I like Joel McHale on The Soup and Community but, boy, does he have a way of sucking the wind out of a joke. Some comedians’ humor just doesn’t translate to the big screen.

He most noticeably pales next to Mark Wahlberg. Mr. Wahlberg’s comedic timing is spot-on and he takes the dramatic portions of the script dead serious, which is, of course, hilarious. He looks genuinely torn between the love of his life and his best friend and without that dogged commitment to the role, I’m not sure how much of the film would work.

Ted himself is also convincing. Where computer animation stops and animatronics begin, I couldn’t say. He has an expressive, animated face and his movements are clumsy the way you would expect of a stuffed animal with stubby legs.

It has been well noted that the humor of Family Guy relies heavily on regurgitating nearly forgotten bits of pop culture from the last three decades or so. The great irony of that show is that it is now syndicated on every channel imaginable and has become saturated into the very pop cultural landscape it recycles for jokes. Perhaps predictably then, Seth MacFarlane winds up recycling bits from Family Guy here.

In addition to plenty of cutaway gags and “Remember this?” pop trivia, Ted features big band jazz during transitions and a prolonged and brutal fight scene, all of which are Family Guy staples. (Regrettably, there is no musical number.) When Ted remarks at a party, “Come on, I don’t sound that much like Peter Griffin,” the line gets a laugh. For Seth MacFarlane, I imagine there is no greater barometer of success than becoming his own reference.

This being his first feature film, Mr. MacFarlane goes all-out. Just because there have already been two celebrity cameos does not mean there’s no room for a third (plus an unexpected narrator). Ted is as vulgar, racist and homophobic as any recent R-rated comedy, delivering all its gags in equally tactless measure. A few fall flat because, well, because they’re not funny. A joke made in poor taste is not automatically a good joke and Mr. MacFarlane sometimes forgets that. He also takes potshots at easy targets and he’s shameless about it. (Really, do you need to take a jab at Justin Bieber or Katy Perry? As someone who appears on a lot of Comedy Central roasts, Seth MacFarlane can do much better than this.)

Ted has the makings of a hit and Seth MacFarlane will no doubt make another movie. But if he wants to stay a relevant figure in comedy, he’ll have to stray further outside his comfort zone next time. Otherwise he may become the victim of one of his own cruel jokes (“Seth MacFarlane, remember him?”). Until then, he scores some easy laughs.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/2/2012