{"id":16699,"date":"2017-07-02T14:13:37","date_gmt":"2017-07-02T19:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=16699"},"modified":"2017-07-02T14:13:37","modified_gmt":"2017-07-02T19:13:37","slug":"a-few-thoughts-on-ted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/02\/a-few-thoughts-on-ted\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Thoughts On <em>Ted<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/teddvd.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"DVD cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\"><\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/28\/back-to-the-past\/\" target=\"_new\">I mentioned<\/a>, I recently got a membership at the video store, and I&#8217;ve been renting (although the &#8220;renting&#8221; there is like a dollar for a week, and sometimes the guy behind the counter finds discounts where I don&#8217;t have to pay at all).<\/p>\n<p>As with most trips to the video store, one wanders the aisles debating the pros and cons of various movies.  Me, I like to stick to the two-for-a-dollar films which are a little older than the new releases or the almost new releases, so I have a wide variety of slasher films and older actioners to choose from.  And it never fails: I spend ten minutes milling about, finding films that I am interested in watching immediately, and it takes me a while to get the two I&#8217;m going to rent.  After that, I find bunches of films I&#8217;d like to watch, too.  So I&#8217;ve started writing them down and keeping a running list of things to rent in upcoming visits to cut down on my loitering.  Also, this explains why all of them start with the letter R or later in the alphabet: That&#8217;s where I was when I thought of it.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, one of the things I put on the list was <em>Ted<\/em>, the movie about the talking teddy bear.  After watching a couple of actioners lately (<em>Sahara<\/em> and <em>Soldier<\/em>, both in the S section, see?), I thought I&#8217;d try a comedy.  Both discs they had for <em>Ted<\/em> were the unrated edition, and given the topic matter, I thought I&#8217;d go with the theatrical release when viewing it.<\/p>\n<p>Boy, howdy.  I expected it to be crass, but <em>this<\/em> crass?  I think I&#8217;m not going to enjoy any comedies, <em>especially<\/em> R-rated comedies, made after 2000.<\/p>\n<p>This film made me long for the sophistication of Adam Sandler, word.  Listen, in Adam Sandler, the man-boy is presented as an aberration, and through the events of the film, he grows up somewhat and learns a life lesson.  In this film, the protagonist and the bear go through some adventures and maybe learn a little, but at the end, the status quo of the man-boy is restored.  Well, there is a little change, but it&#8217;s lost amid the drug use and swearing.<\/p>\n<p>The presence of Sam Jones, the star of the film <em>Flash Gordon<\/em>, was an amusing touch, but that&#8217;s about the only thing I found slightly amusing in the movie.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, well, back to the actioners for me.<\/p>\n<p>Every time they release another one of these R-rated comedies, it bombs at the box office late.  Which is good because hopefully they&#8217;ll stop making them.  Unfortunately, the intelligence and sophistication of old comedies is probably beyond the reach of the current man-boys making movies, never to be recovered.  So we descend closer and closer to <em>Idiocracy<\/em>&#8216;s <em>Ow, My Balls<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned, I recently got a membership at the video store, and I&#8217;ve been renting (although the &#8220;renting&#8221; there is like a dollar for a week, and sometimes the guy behind the counter finds discounts where I don&#8217;t have to pay at all). As with most trips to the video store, one wanders the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16700,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16699\/revisions\/16700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}