The plot does get a little fuzzy at times.

It's easy to grow jaded about movies; sometimes it seems like if you've seen one buddy picture about a reclusive genius teaming up with an animated teddy bear to battle a human trafficking ring, you've seen them all.  Teddy (2021) doesn't really stray from the genius/teddy bear formula, and it hits all the notes you'd expect from the genre, but there's something to be said for taking a tried and true formula and executing it well.

 

Srividya (Sayyesha) is a young and carefree college student with a talent for photography and a boyfriend that she's not ready to tell her parents about yet.  During a bus trip with her classmates, Sri tries to help an accident victim.  She's injured, and is promptly rushed to the hospital, where she's placed in a room with a wisecracking kid and his enormous teddy bear, but the sinister hospital staff promptly drug her and take her away.  As Sri's body slips into a medically induced coma, her spirit slips into the form of the teddy bear.  She apologizes to the kid (who is, after all, now out one giant teddy bear) and escapes from the hospital.

 

Shiva (Arya), on the other hand, is a brilliant loner with an eidetic memory.  His memory is so powerful that he's able to completely master a new skill every few months.  he's already earned several advanced degrees, but instead of working he plays the stock market in an incredibly precise fashion, always earning just enough money to live comfortably.  That takes him about fifteen minutes a day, leaving him plenty of time for learning and avoiding human contact.  Shiva has a mother (Praveena) and one friend (Satish) and that is enough for him.

 

However, while Shiva's a recluse, he's not heartless.  When he sees a gang of thugs threatening a woman on a train, he steps in.  The thugs assume he's easy prey, but Shiva hasn't just mastered mental skills, he's picked up phenomenal skill in hand to hand combat as well.  Basically, he has all the skills of Batman without the motivation, but he's more than happy to put a stop to injustice when it's happening right in front of him.

 

Also on the train?  Sri.  She realizes that Shiva is someone who could help her get her body back, so she follows him home.  Once she manages to convince Shiva that he's not crazy and she needs his help they . . . spend some time getting to know each other,  But after that montage is over, the new best pals get down to some serious Batmanning.

 

Now, we don't really live in a word where movies about crime fighting teddy bears and their brilliant hunky sidekicks are a dime a dozen.  It's a ridiculous premise.  Teddy makes it work by taking it completely seriously.  This is not a comedy.  Funny things happen sometimes, but that's because the movie pairs a chirpy extrovert with a gloomy recluse, and also they are fighting crime and one of them is trapped in the body of a toy.  The premise is silly enough, so the movie doesn't milk it, it just commits completely.  It's just a focused, fun action movie with a nasty villain, cleanly choreographed and brutal fight scenes, and engaging leads.  And a talking teddy bear.