Jupiter Ascending: written and directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski; starring Mila Kunis (Jupiter Jones), Channing Tatum (Caine Wise), Sean Bean (Stinger Apini), and Eddie Redmayne (Balem Abrasax) (2015): The Wachowski Brothers serve up a frenetic, boring science-fiction movie that plays out as if Dune had been adapted for Heavy Metal magazine in the 1970's by someone who had been repeatedly dropped on his head as a child.
The fight scenes whiz by at such a pace that they're mostly unfathomable, as are a couple of the ship-to-ship battles. The Wachowskis lift concepts from a long list of better movies, novels, and comic books. They might still be able to produce and direct if they stopped drinking so much espresso, but no one should let them write their own scripts ever again. Ever. Again.
The borrowings often become so odd and mismatched as to become hilarious. A concept lifted from Men in Black bleeds into an entire sequence meant as an homage to Terry Gilliam's Brazil. And in case you miss the fact that this is an homage to Gilliam, here's Terry Gilliam playing a bureaucrat! Now back to the super-serious space opera, in which it turns out that the Death Star is a factory producing Soylent Green! Hey, is that Hawkman? Are those weapons named after the game Warhammer?
The absurdities mount. Does a movie with a character named Jupiter have several scenes set inside the clouds of Jupiter? Did you know that bees are genetically engineered to recognize space royalty? Did you want to know where crop circles come from? Hey, did you know that human life on Earth came from somewhere else? Do you want to see Mila Kunis in a hospital gown and gynecological stirrups while a pitched laser battle goes on all around her? Of course you do! The true reality of life on Earth has been hidden from you: you're the power source for strange, hidden overlords. Why does that seem so familiar?
Channing Tatum is hilariously miscast as a gruff warrior who seems like the result of the Wachowskis' fannish desire to see Wolverine ride the Silver Surfer's flying surfboard. Sean Bean plays the Sean Bean role. Mila Kunis plays Neo, The Chosen One... I mean Jupiter Jones, The Chosen One. Eddie Redmayne plays the evil space nobleman in a way that should probably get his Best Acting Oscar revoked. There are moments of beauty and splendour amongst all the junk, but they're few and far between. Not recommended.
Ted: written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild; directed by Seth MacFarlane; starring Mark Wahlberg (John Bennett), Mila Kunis (Lori Collins), Seth MacFarlane (Voice of Ted), and Giovanni Ribisi (Donny) (2012): Watching Ted for the second time, this time on TV, it's visual crumminess is less apparent, though still noticeable. I'm sure Seth MacFarlane doesn't care. Either that or he was trying to make Kevin Smith look like Ingmar Bergman. And it does. Ted makes Clerks look like Wild Strawberries.
Nonetheless, it's still a funny movie, with that Airplane vibe of throwing jokes at the screen as fast as possible so as to overcome the failure of any one joke. The Giovanni Ribisi subplot that takes over the final third of the movie is still crap, the movie is still at least 20 minutes too long, and MacFarlane's sudden turn into sentimentality towards the end of the film would get him kicked out of the Airplane/Mel Brooks School of Film Comedy, if such a thing existed.
Maybe the funniest thing about the film isn't in the film. See, Ted focuses on its protagonists' love of the awful 1980 sf/action/comic-strip-movie Flash Gordon, which starred Sam Jones, who would soon never be seen again. Until Ted, in which the characters actually get to meet with (and party with) Jones. But in real life, Jones now runs a high-profile security firm. How could MacFarlane not have made this a plot point? Such a missed opportunity to not have a talking, walking teddy bear and Mark Wahlberg working security for Amanda Bynes or Lindsay Lohan! Alas. Recommended.
Ted: written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild; directed by Seth MacFarlane; starring Mark Wahlberg (John Bennett), Mila Kunis (Lori Collins), Seth MacFarlane (Voice of Ted), and Giovanni Ribisi (Donny) (2012): Seth MacFarlane doesn't explore much new territory here, but Ted really is quite funny. As I'm not a Family Guy fan (per the Family Guy calendar in one of the Futurama movies, "12 laughs a year!"), that's high praise.
A child's Christmas wish brings his teddy bear to life (the level of the kid's imagination being indicated by the name 'Ted', I guess -- this is not a film populated with smart people). After a brief spurt of celebrity for the bear, things settle down. And 28 years later, Ted, mostly unchanged (his voice has deepened but he's still anatomically neuter, though not philosophically so), still hangs out with John, played by Mark Wahlberg.
Most of the laughs come from the holy MacFarlane trinity of political uncorrectness, slapstick, and obsessively weird pop-culture riffs. I thought the extended structural reference to the 1980 movie Flash Gordon was pretty funny. You may not. Love him or hate him, MacFarlane just stays in there throwing and throwing and throwing. He doesn't test spaghetti by throwing it at a wall; he MAKES spaghetti by throwing it at a wall.
Ted demonstrates that MacFarlane is somewhat limited as a filmmaker. The film looks awful, as in early Kevin Smith awful. Both the direction and the cinematography wouldn't look good on TV, much less on a big screen. Besides those problems, a keener editor could have worked wonders. A subplot involving Giovanni Ribisi as a Ted-obsessed stalker goes nowhere, and expends about 20 eminently cuttable minutes doing so. The subplot also allows for a plethora of unfunny fat jokes directed at Ribisi's fat, young, obnoxious son. It's bottom-of-the-barrel time at House MacFarlane, and for no good reason -- at 106 minutes, the movie is ridiculously padded as it is.
However, Wahlberg and Kunis are game, though Kunis doesn't get a lot to work with -- she's pretty much stuck as generic unfunny girlfriend for all her aesthetic and thespic charms. Someone should write a romantic comedy just for her. MacFarlane voices Ted as MacFarlane Voice#1 -- basically Family Guy or American Dad with a Boston accent. It's funny stuff, though one wonders what a voice actor with greater range could do with the part. So it goes. Recommended.
