Reviews for "Ted 2": Fluff, puff, pass

Although "Ted 2" is scoring shortly on Rotten Tomatoes with 45%, many reviewers are nevertheless touting the sequel to Seth MacFarlane's 2012 surprise hit as a bowl of laughs -- as in toilet bowl.

Though sufficiently well acted and packed with cameos, the sum of vulgar jokes about black-male genitalia and human rights themes is a polarizing piece of work that is delighting some and disgusting others.

MacFarlane, who voices the crude teddy bear opposite Mark Wahlberg, said that he deliberately wanted to make the return of Ted different from the first movie "in a substantial way," according to The New York Times. "I see a lot of sequels that attempt to duplicate the same formula of the first movie...but you don't want to be repeating yourself because it just gets boring and grueling."

The challenge was to invent a new plot that resonated with audiences three years after "Ted" blasted box offices with $550 million in worldwide ticket sales.

MacFarlane said he was toying with ideas of having Ted driving a pot shipment across the country, but scrapped that when "We're the Millers" popped up with a similar story line. At the time he was dreaming up Ted ideas, MacFarlane was shooting his western satire "A Million Ways to Die in the West" and was reading about the Civil War and Dred Scott. The passage about the emancipation of Scott gave him the inspiration for the theme of "Ted 2" in which the magical stuffed bear fights for civil rights in court: not to be considered property -- but a person.

In the meantime, Ted struggles to conceive with his new wife, a sexy supermarket clerk played by Jessica Barth; and with the help of Amanda Seyfried as a just-graduated, pot-loving attorney Sam (Samantha L. Jackson), there is no shortage of semen and weed jokes -- nor love-line lost, without Mila Kunis playing Wahlberg's partner in the second movie.

A.A. Dowd from A.V. Club remarks that despite concerted efforts to deliver an enhanced plot, "Ted 2" is less charming than the original, pointing out that the punch-lines consistently fall below the belt.

"The comedy, as expected, is scattershot. There are lame cameos, like a one-shot appearance by Jay Leno, but also inspired ones, like a priceless exchange with Liam Neeson. And while an early Breakfast Club spoof is lazy even by MacFarlane standards, a 'Jurassic Park' parody plays smarter tribute to Spielberg's blockbuster than anything in 'Jurassic World'. Whether this smattering of shtick has the desired effect will depend on one's tolerance for jizz jokes, celebrity namedrops, and frequently desperate attempts to shock or offend. But even the target demographic may feel as though they're watching a rerun."

New York Times critic Manohla Dargis doesn't think Ted's struggle for personhood is endearing or dignified.

"Mr. MacFarlane can be funny, but Ted 2 is insultingly lazy hack work that is worth discussing primarily because of how he tries and fails to turn race, and specifically black men, into comedy fodder...Ted's efforts to be a husband and father lead to assorted complications, most important a legal battle that forces him to prove he's human rather than property. To that end, Mr. MacFarlane aligns Ted's struggle with enslaved black Americans so that, while watching a scene in 'Roots' in which Kunta Kinte is whipped, Ted jokes that he's just like the brutalized slave. The joke is absurd, weird and unfunny, and it exemplifies Mr. MacFarland's reliance on surface shocks as well as his assumption that engaging with race is merely a matter of putting black people on-screen; or having a black woman "comically" explain the history of slavery; or having Ted and John repeatedly employ a vulgarism for black penises.

However, Variety film critic Scott Foundas couldn't help but laugh:

"Both 'Ted' movies are, ultimately, one-joke affairs rooted in the idea of taking some emblem of childhood innocence and vulgarizing it (like Stewie, the nefarious infant from MacFarlane's 'Family Guy' series). That joke, though, turns out to be a resilient one, and the chemistry between Wahlberg and MacFarlane is infectiously puerile, whether they're playing an ill-conceived game of catch in a sperm bank's storage room or shouting out "sad suggestions" during a night of improv comedy. The visual effects responsible for transforming MacFarlane's on-set motion-capture performance into his 2-foot-tall alter ego have once again been seamlessly executed. Special mention is also due Tony-winning director-choreographer Rob Ashford for staging the film's opening title sequence -- an elaborate, Busby Berkeley-style dance number featuring a tuxedoed Ted and a chorus line of dancers in geometric configurations atop a giant wedding cake."

Tell us: Are you going to check out "Ted 2"?