Review

Review Date: 17-October-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Team America: World Police (2004)

The folks behind Team America: World Police have led a provocative marketing campaign, promising to piss off a bunch of people and proclaiming it to be the most outrageous film of the year. So, although I didn't have high hopes for the movie I at least expected to be taken aback or to witness people in the audience becoming visibly stirred up. Sadly, however, the purported shock value of Team America relies principally on vomiting, jokes about blowjobs between heterosexual men, and the use of words like "pussy," none of which should astonish or greatly entertain anyone old enough to get into an R-rated movie. This might sound strange when discussing a flick that includes graphic sex between marionettes, but Team America is too tame.

The brainchild of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, Team America is the first movie that dares to approach 9/11 and its aftermath with a sense of humor. (It is also, I believe, the first motion picture that will turn a profit while featuring puppets instead of human actors.) Its protagonists are a band of red-white-and-blue-clad vigilantes who span the globe fighting terrorism from their headquarters inside Mount Rushmore. Except for the somewhat slanderous naming of real-life people as bad guys, the story follows a predictable pattern in which a new recruit (voiced by Parker) must prove himself worthy of the sacred cause and the love of a good woman (voiced by Kristen Miller). The obstacles in his path include self-doubt (expressed, memorably, in pints of vomit), a hostile teammate with unresolved issues, and the evil alliance of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and the Hollywood-based Film Actors Guild (F.A.G.), headed by the serpent-tongued Alec Baldwin (impersonated by Maurice LaMarche).

Marionettes are silly by nature and offer an interesting break from the norm, but the rest of Team America doesn't hang so tough. Its clichés seem to imitate B movies rather than spoof them, and it doesn't make enough fun of its characters. Only the portrayal of Kim (also Parker) as a childishly wistful egomaniac is worthy of note,* though it doesn't go too far beyond the dictator's eccentric reputation. The rest of the lampooning is tepid, unimaginative stuff: the actors guild (including Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Sean Penn) is mocked for being left-wing, quack politicos, while Team America is ridiculed for being insensitive and reactionary in good old Uncle Sam fashion (they casually destroy the Great Pyramids and much of Paris while kicking Arab ass). At the same time, however, they are depicted as heroes in the recent propagandized sense of the word, and I'm willing to bet that many people will actually see them that way. It's no stretch to imagine Toby Keith recording the movie's theme song, "America: Fuck Yeah!", in absolute seriousness and selling a ton of CDs (with child warning labels, of course). Maybe I'm supposed to be amused if people think Team America is great and thereby miss the joke, but the mere reflection of stupidity doesn't do it for me. Where are the real barbs, the scandalous finger-pointing, the hilarious comeuppance of arrogance? Where George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden? Parker and Stone can't resist sending up Michael Moore as a fat slob, but one could wish they had balls as big as he does.

*I'm not just saying that because the "Dear Leader" and I may be related from a few centuries back; he spews the best rants and sings a touching little ditty at the end of Act Two.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.