*** (out of ****)
Featuring the voices of Trey Parker and Matt Stone
Directed by Trey Parker & written by Parker, Stone, and Pam Brady
2004
107 min R
“Team America: World Police,” the marionette-driven new film from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “SouthPark,” begins by slamming the War on Terrorism and ends by slamming those who are protesting that same war. There seems to be some kind of logical error here. If the movie were sincere about its first part, then shouldn’t it be lauding those it smites in the second?
As near as I can figure, there are two ways you can take “Team America: World Police.” The first way is to interpret it as meaning the exact same thing as “SouthPark” and everything else Parker and Stone have done, which is an attack on anyone who stands up for or believes in anything. Most of what they’ve done is utter nihilism, a booming statement that “everything and everyone is wrong, stupid, and they fill us with contempt.” The political left’s cruelest view of the political right is put alongside the right’s least charitable view of the left. “Team America,” like “SouthPark,” is intended to offend everyone, and will be a commercial success because offending everyone is the chic new way to offend no one, with the bonus that it creates an impression of “satire.” If you’re in the mood to be offended, you will be offended, and if you’re in the mood to have your beliefs and your ego stroked, you will find something with which to agree. An indiscriminate hatred for everything is not much of a philosophy, but we all feel that way from time-to-time, so it’s as valid a topic for a movie as anything else.
The other way to interpret “Team America” is as a right-wing fantasy, or at least a libertarian one. If you believe Hollywood is a liberal bastion of Jews, anarchists, and homosexuals—and not simply greedy—then it follows that the only way to make a red-blooded Republican message is to hide it as a joke. Hear me out: every gag attacking the right in “Team America” can be shrugged off or even seen as pleasing to those in favor of the war. Sure, the sequences in which Team America razes Paris and Egypt in search of terrorists is a clever criticism of America’s clumsy and bloody foreign policy. But really, what Dubya-supporting hawk isn’t going to get a kick out of watching the Eiffel Tower fall on the Arc de Triomph? Is his response going to be uncomfortable squirming or is he going to say to himself “the Frogs deserve it, the cowards!” And, when I heard the song “America! F*** Yeah!” crank up, somehow I don’t think the guffawing band of teenage boys behind me were thinking to themselves “take that, unquestioning flag-wavers who treat patriotism like a football game!” It’s more likely they were fantasizing about roaring to school in a brand new Ford F350 with that same song blaring on the radio, to the howling approval of their friends. Or perhaps they were hoping “F*** Yeah!” could be used to liven up the Olympics.
But consider how none of “Team America’s” attacks on the left share that ambivalence. During the “what we’ve learned today” speech that comes near the movie’s end, the hero makes a case for the nation needing the continuous push-and-pull between liberals and conservatives (a sentiment more-or-less echoing what I wrote in my review of “Bowling for Columbine” a couple years ago). But this cry for balance, in the world of “Team America,” seems nominal at best. Sure, one of the guys in Team America dies and Arabs and Koreans are gunned down by the score. But the worst fates are reserved for Hollywood actors who protest the war. Puppets representing Sean Penn, Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Hunt, Liv Tyler, Janeane Garofalo, Tim Robbins, Ethan Hawke, Matt Damon, Susan Sarandon, and even Parker and Stone’s buddy George Clooney all die horrible, gruesome, organ-splattering deaths. The belief that celebrities know more about politics than the average person is almost as stupid as the belief that the opinions of celebrities are somehow less valid than that of the average person.
Anyway, every last thespian is butchered mercilessly—again, to the shrieking delight of the boys behind me—but only after being exposed as pro-violence hypocrites, in league with North Korea, blowing up Mount Rushmore, and being called gay over and over again. Because Parker and Stone are libertarian, big business and capitalism can do no wrong. Two mentions are made of corporate America secretly running the world or being somehow connected to or profiting from the War on Terrorism. But those mentions are put in the mouths of idiots and scoffed immediately. And, for some reason, hybrid cars take a beating. The hawks come across as well-meaning if clumsy, but the doves—well, they’re the REAL enemy. Uh-huh.
(Or am I just falling for the trap that I described in the second paragraph?)
But I’m not recommending “Team America” for its politics. I’m recommending it because puppet sex is funny. So is puppet kung-fu, puppet dancing, puppet slow-motion, puppet singing, and puppet vomiting. Especially puppet vomiting. And then…some more puppet vomiting. The movie is a visually delightful combination of high technique and technical incompetence. Marionettes speak and gesture flawlessly but when they fight, they just kind of shake. It’s also rather intriguing that each character is given only one real expression and it serves him well through the whole movie. Audiences fond of obviously-phony miniatures will spasm with delight over the mock-ups of Paris, Washington DC, a Middle Eastern village, and Team America’s mountain hide-out. The toy-sized red-white-and-blue vehicles the Team takes into action are at once adorable and missile-coated, and when two of the team are threatened by giant panthers…well, let’s just say the pay-off is as good as the set-up.
Page two of "Team America." Back to home.