The marionettes of Team America: World Police wield hilarious but off-color satire in their assault on both sides of the political divide.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published October 14, 2004
[Photo: Paramount Pictures]
Team America: World Police stars a band of marionette adventurers who take on terrorists, with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone pulling the strings.
Hands down, if those marionette strings are long enough, the funniest political movie of 2004 is Team America: World Police, an adults-only puppet show from the relentlessly twisted minds that created South Park. It's ironic that such a dirty movie can cleanse the muddy taste this contentious election has left in our mouths.
President Bush and John Kerry are never mentioned or seen, but it could be their hands pulling the strings in goofier moments, if they're capable of such demeanor. There's something to appease and offend everyone, from gung-ho invasions of foreign nations for suspect reasons to Hollywood antiwar activists Tim Robbins, Alec Baldwin and Michael Moore being blown to bits. Both sides of the aisle are likely to be rolling in it.
In fact, the only people who can rightfully feel insulted are producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay, whose bombastic action flicks Armageddon and Pearl Harbor offer a template (and a funny song) for Trey Parker and Matt Stone's spoof. And maybe Gerry Anderson, whose marionette mechanics for the 1960s TV series Thunderbirds are flipped at both conservative and liberal authority.
But Anderson would probably marvel at the superbly detailed sets Parker's puppets - with strings proudly visible - trundle through. From the opening sequence in an amusingly compact Paris to a North Korean theater where Kim Jong Il hosts an underhanded peace conference, Team America: World Police is always a model of mini-impressionist production design. The marionettes, created by the Chiodo brothers (Killer Klowns From Outer Space), are old-school clunky with new wave attitudes mostly voiced by Parker.
Team America is a band of adventurers with star-spangled weaponry that we meet when they foil Middle Eastern terrorists carrying WMDs. The fact that the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Sphinx are collateral damage is brushed aside with Jedi mind tricks that would make Donald Rumsfeld smile. The death of one team member leads to the recruitment of Gary Johnston (Parker), an actor on Broadway in Lease, a slap at Rent, with the first of the film's hilariously distasteful songs, Everyone Has AIDS. The team needs an actor to pose as a terrorist for infiltration purposes. Gary agrees, undergoing a ludicrously transparent makeover, but he doesn't fit in with the crew.
Gary deserts the team, leading to a montage of the marionette posed at various U.S. monuments while an inspiring Toby Keith-style anthem plays. Later, another montage of Gary's training to rejoin the team is accompanied by a song declaring the cheesy benefits of montages, sounding like a Rocky III reject by Survivor.
The central terrorist threat is Il, who plans to detonate WMDs around the world while foreign leaders rub elbows with grandstanding celebrities. Why? Because, as Il sings in Parker's unapologetically stereotyped diction: "I'm So Ronery."
If the satire seems weak at times, and shyly bipartisan at others, Team America: World Police does boast a prodigious vomiting scene for lowbrow tastes and the funniest sex ever captured on film. Gary hooks up with teammate Lisa (Kristen Miller), and if the results were trimmed, as reported, to escape an NC-17 rating, it isn't obvious. It's the Kama Sutra with strings and hinges. You'll never again look at Barbie and Ken without smiling.
Team America: World Police is like a breath of fresh marijuana smoke blown in your face. Or maybe that's cigar smoke from liberal and conservative fat cats who can't tell when they're being ribbed. The thin line Parker and Stone tread, and their successful navigation of it, is summed up in the team's fight song, an unprintable declaration of American pride. One side may take it seriously while the other takes it as a joke. But both sides will be singing it on the way out of the theater.
Team America: World Police
Grade: A-
Director: Trey Parker
Cast: voices of Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Daran Norris
