“Ted 2” is a Seth MarFarlane-directed live-action comedy. Unfortunately, that sentence is losing a little of its luster. Don’t misunderstand, I love Seth MarFarlane’s sense of humor and the content that he produces; however, “Ted 2” suffers from many of the same problems that plagued “Ted,” in many cases, to a greater degree.

There are laughs, there is irreverence and there is referentiality, in spades. Those qualities together do not a great comedy make. Shock value is almost unattainable by MarFarlane at this point. He’s known as one of the most offensive comics out there and going for shock-value laughs is a dangerous game. Replacing quality with shock value is kind of like the comedic equivalent of substituting a cute dog for a good story (see “Max” review).

“Ted 2” certainly has its charms, but I doubt they will age well. A film like “A Million Ways to Die in the West” has grown on me since its release, “Ted” hasn’t and “Ted 2” certainly won’t. Seth MarFarlane is an fantastic producer and actor; however, his skill as a director hasn’t yet been fully realized. There are dramatic and comedic lulls in “Ted 2” that are distracting and break the momentum of the film.

Furthermore, there is something different about film comedy and television comedy. It’s somewhat easier for a television show to set up running gags and callback jokes when the distance between the original joke and the callback is great enough to make the callback seem like seeing an old friend again. In film, the time distance is much smaller and therefore the callback isn’t as novel and if the original joke was a less-than-stellar, the callback is wasted effort. My point being, MarFarlane is crossing the streams. His movies try to use television comedy approaches and sometimes it lands and other times it bounces off. “Ted 2” is about half and half.

4 of 6 stars