Q: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
While the first "Ted" was an origins story, the sequel expands on Ted's uncertain place in the world, with John continuing his role as straight man and loyal, idiotic co-conspirator. The overstuffed story takes one too many detours — including an inane set piece at New York Comic-Con — and the ubiquitous Hasbro product placement is distracting. The movie's best jokes are simple and visual, like the sight of Ted dressed in rain gear to procure Tom Brady's sperm. ||||| Hey, did you hear the one about the loser who wished his teddy bear would come to life? And it did? And now 20 years later the two of them still sit around getting stoned, cracking dirty jokes and basically wasting their lives? 
  
 Yeah. I heard that one too. Sadly. 
  
 But although you'd think the original "Ted" had gotten all the gags to be gotten out of that setup - and you'd be right - here comes "Ted 2," with Mark Wahlberg returning as the technically grown-up John and creator Seth MacFarlane once again voicing Ted. 
  
 And it's unbearable. 
  
 Sure, MacFarlane can write simple jokes as long as the 'f' key on his laptop holds out. Some of them are even funny. But a lot of them don't pay off, and most trod the same well-worn territory - potheads, practical jokes, politically-incorrect cliches. 
  
 And when it comes to everything else that goes into a real screenplay - developing characters who change and deepen, or even just creating incidents that lead logically into the next - MacFarlane's terminally clueless. 
  
 The story picks up as Ted is getting ready to marry his prostitute girlfriend from the first film. Ah, romance. But when they want to start a family, and try to adopt - Ted's lack of anatomical detail making other options impossible - the state turns him down for not being human. And it's off to court to fight for Ted's civil rights. 
  
 It's hard to keep track of how many ways this goes wrong, cinematically, but let's try. 
  
 First of all, MacFarlane isn't just a shallow fratboy when it comes to writing about relationships - far worse, he doesn't realize he's a shallow fratboy. The few times he, disastrously, tries to get serious he merely reveals himself as being comically out of touch. 
  
 For example, the film tells us, gravely, that John's marriage broke up because his wife tried to change him. From what, being a stain on the couch cushions? It also has Ted and his wife deciding to have a kid because they're fighting all the time over money. Right, because having a baby is suddenly going to make that go away. 
  
 Even a comedy about a talking teddy bear needs to have a vague concept about how real people behave, and the consequences of that behavior. MacFarlane doesn't know or doesn't care - and the story ends with Ted and John no wiser than they were at the beginning. 
  
 Nor can MacFarlane even structure that story. A self-deluding song-and-dance man, he not only starts the film with an elaborate tap number for Ted, but then stops the movie halfway through so Amanda Seyfried can sing a love ballad. The idea of Ted being put on trial is so fake, so unfunny, so Capra-corny, he does it twice. 
  
 There are a few good jokes, and one or two nice sequences - like Ted and John's favorite pastime of going to an improv theater and yelling painfully unfunny suggestions at the comics. 
  
 But little of the movie is shot or staged nicely - it has the flatly lit, dully composed look of a '80s studio comedy - and Wahlberg and MacFarlane grow tiresome fast. Seyfried's character, meanwhile, might as well be called Miss Wish Fulfillment - a pretty young lawyer who, on their first meeting, sprawls barefoot on her desk, flipping her blonde hair out of her eyes and smoking dope. 
  
 Most sequels are simple callous cash grabs, but this one is particularly grisly. Wahlberg, really -- after that awful "Entourage" movie, you're giving us this? And MacFarlane - you know, we'd just about forgiven you for the Oscars. Just. And this is how you repay us? With a tapdancing teddy bear? 
  
 Ted may indeed be more than a stuffed animal. But the guys who made "Ted 2" are a couple of dummies. 
  
 Ratings note: The film contains strong language, gross humor, sexual situations, drug abuse and violence. 
  
 'Ted 2' (R) Universal (108 min.) Directed by Seth MacFarlane. With Mark Wahlberg, Amanda Seyfried. Opens Friday in New Jersey. 1/2 
  
 Stephen Whitty may be reached at stephenjwhitty@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwhitty. Find him on Facebook. 
  
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A:
A court declares a 2-foot-tall talking teddy bear is, um, not human. So starts Seth MacFarlane's Ted 2, in which Ted and his faithful buddy John recruit a pot-smoking lawyer to plead his case while cracking jokes about black penises. What do critics have to say? Will everyone love it? Definitely not, writes Joe Williams at the St. Louis Post Dispatch. But "because one man's mirth is another man's poison, this critic can only consult his belly as the barometer. On a gut level, Ted 2 is a funny film." One hilarious scene that sees the characters "blaze a trail through a law library is a stoner spoof of Footloose," he notes. Viewers might also be surprised to find some sweet moments, Williams says. "MacFarlane—you know, we'd just about forgiven you for the Oscars. Just. And this is how you repay us?" asks Stephen Whitty at the Star-Ledger. In between calling him a "shallow fratboy" and "terminally clueless," Whitty pans the film as "unbearable," mainly because it’s absent of a decent plot and interesting characters. "Sure, MacFarlane can write simple jokes as long as the 'f' key on his laptop holds out," he notes. But "most trod the same well-worn territory." Manohla Dargis is on the same page. Prepare for a "comedy dead zone," she warns. "Ted 2 is insultingly lazy hack work that is worth discussing primarily because of how (MacFarlane) tries and fails to turn race, and specifically black men, into comedy fodder," Dargis writes at the New York Times. One joke in particular in which Ted compares himself to a brutalized black slave proves "absurd, weird, and unfunny." Yes, "Ted 2 is absurd and occasionally disgusting," but "it is also wickedly funny" and "surprisingly earnest," writes Rebecca Keegan at the Los Angeles Times. She admits "the overstuffed story takes one too many detours … and the ubiquitous Hasbro product placement is distracting," but the comedy is there. In fact, Keegan says she laughed so hard at one joke in particular that she thought security would escort her from the theater.