8 year old John gets a talking teddy for Christmas and makes a wish that his stuffed buddy could really speak and that they could be best friends forever.  Well, lo and behold, his wish comes true, but 27 years - and brief fame for Ted - later things aren't going so great.

Sure, John (Mark Wahlberg) has a wonderful girlfriend, Lori (Mila Kunis), but he and Ted (Seth Macfarlane) have somewhat arrested development, spending most of their time on the couch, getting high and watching 'Flash Gordon'.

After four years together Lori wants more from John, perhaps it's time for Ted to try and move out of the flat and for John to move on with his life?

Written and directed by Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy and American Dad, takes its cue from the wish fulfilment fantasy comedies of the eighties (Big, Vice Versa, Mannequin) and adds a subversive twist.  Taking the dream that most children have of their toys coming to life and stretching it to its logical and comical conclusion.  An opening sequence - clunkily narrated by Patrick Stewart - hop, skips and jumps us from John's childhood up to his mid-thirties, doing a semi-decent job of setting Ted up in this world.

Wahlberg and Kunis make for a nice screen couple, and there's an easy-going relationship between Wahlberg and MacFarlane's Ted that feels true to their 'best friends forever' mantra.  Ultimately the film is about these key relationships, and the cast clearly click, but, the film lacks any dramatic and emotional weight, so there's nothing there to really ground the comedy.

Similarly, MacFarlane doesn't let the humour emerge from the situations, he scores cheap laughs by having characters say 'shocking' things for the sake of it, sometimes this works and a line will catch you off guard, but for the most part it grows wearisome quickly and a lot of MacFarlane's barbs feel lazy and school yardish.

Look at something like Team America: World Police, it mines its laughs from satirising celebrity involvment in crisis, ineffectual peace-keeping organisations, shoddy international relations, as well broad parodies of Michael Bay action movies and the art of puppetry.  Ted is content to call a fat kid fat and hope that'll earn enough yucks to carry it along to the next jibe.  Now, I'm not trying to be overly P.C. here, but what is off about this film is a lot of the jokes are cruel without intelligence behind them.  MacFarlane seems to want to justify this approach by saying 'anyone's a target', but mocking yourself for making Ted's voice sound a lot like Peter Griffin's isn't the same as calling a small boy fat over and over.  Look at Bad Santa, there's a film that twists what would otherwise be a 'family' comedy and mines it for the darkest, dirtiest laughs imaginable, yet it does so with a brain, with wit, with consideration, and inversely winds up becoming the foul-mouthed dark comedy that all the family can love.

Take away the insults and Ted is nothing but stuff and fluff, which is a shame, because it's a neat idea for a film and the lead cast are solid.  Supporting roles are even less defined than those found in an Adam Sandler movie, with Joel McHale and Giovanni Ribisi playing a pair of blandly creepy weirdoes.  Throw in a handful of obscure celebrity cameos and we skit even closer to Adam Sandler territory, which is ironic for a film that mocks Sandler's own Jack & Jill at one point, talk about pots and kettles.

When you come away from a comedy and the best thing you can say is that the CGI was convincing, then there are definitely issues.  Yes, the effects team have done a wonderful job making Ted seem real, it's just a shame a similar amount of effort wasn't put into the script.  A surprisingly dull, dreary, predictable and gutless movie.