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Team America’s Free Fire Zone
A refreshingly vulgar satire of the usual puppets on screen.
Team South Park, God bless ‘em, are determined to yank every chain. Team America: World Police, the great new comedy from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is guaranteed to test your patience, no matter what your taste.
The basic joke behind Team America needs no explanation to anyone familiar with the beloved 60s TV series, Thunderbirds. Anyone else is bound to be thoroughly puzzled by Parker and Stone’s decision to do a cheesy puppet movie. But they’ll probably laugh too, when not cringing in disgust.
The very existence of Team America: World Police is itself a devastating critique of standard Hollywood filmmaking. An abysmal major-studio Thunderbirds movie appeared this summer, inexplicably done in live action (“I guess because the stories were so great,” Parker sniped in a recent interview). Now along come independents Parker and Stone to show them how it’s done.
Tangled lines
The determinedly standard-issue plot tells of a crack anti-terrorist team that circles the world fighting Osama Bin Laden look-alikes while generally destroying every famous landmark they encounter. Team America: World Police takes full advantage of the heavy fromage factor that makes Thunderbird reruns so entertaining. The filmmakers coax unforgettable performances out of their stringed plastic thespians, tangled up in romantic difficulties and the constant struggle to keep at least one foot on the ground while walking.
Team America is not strictly a Thunderbirds parody—its primary target is jingoistic, Jerry Bruckheimer-style action films, a point made explicit in the tender love ballad “Pearl Harbor Sucked (And I Miss You).” (“Why does Michael Bay get to keep making movies?” croons the singer plaintively.) The movie’s main musical theme is “America (Fuck Yeah!),” a stirring anthem Bruckheimer only wishes he could feature. I guarantee you that there will be patrons of this movie who will adopt this catchy tune without irony.
But when Parker and Stone make movies, no one gets off easy. Those who smirk knowingly as Team America destroys the pyramids and the Eiffel Tower in pursuit of George Bush-style justice may find themselves squirming at the depiction of the Film Actor’s Guild (a.k.a F.A.G.). Alec Baldwin leads a group of Hollywood liberals like Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Samuel Jackson—none of whom participated in the movie—spouting empty drivel while acting as the willing stooges of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (who also declined to cooperate with the filmmakers).
Nobody’s safe
While most viewers will perceive that Parker and Stone are simply parodying the right-wing view of Hollywood liberalism, there are genuine zingers scored. Puppet Sean Penn gets weepy as he describes his visit to Saddam Hussein’s former paradise-on-earth. Also designed to inspire liberal harrumphing is the Broadway musical “Lease,” with its boffo number “Everyone Has AIDS.” Stay till the end of the closing credits and you’ll be rewarded with the epic melody, “You are Useless, Alec Baldwin.”
Piercing p.c. attitudes is only one way Parker and Stone test their audience. The duo is inordinately fond of scatological humour. Thus the standard “Our-hero-has-hit-bottom” alleyway sequence (“You’ve given up on life, haven’t you?” shouts a woman from a window) is driven home with a never-ending vomit scene. Similarly, the movie’s climactic speech ensures that, even if you could frantically slice and dub the rest of it, this movie will never be shown on television. (And yet there were numerous folks who brought their kids to the preview. Well, it’s an education of sorts.)
Parker and Stone bring to Team America the same liberating comedic anarchy that characterized the movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” This outing does not have the same impact as that great cinematic slap—Kim Jong Il’s sad ballad “I’m So Lonely” is amusing but also reminiscent of Satan’s lovelorn lament in the South Park film—and many will be put off by Parker and Stone’s gleeful celebration of the sophomoric. But for anyone craving another “Uncut” hit, the response to Team America: World Police will be a hearty “Fuck, yeah!”
Steve Burgess reviews the screen, small and large, for The Tyee. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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King Paul (not verified)
7 years ago
You know, Kim Jong-Il loves the movies. It’s almost certain that he’ll see this film… if he hasn’t seen it already. How will he react?
According to his biographer*, Kim Jong-Il is a sensitive, arty fellow who has produced several films and written a book on directing. If he hadn’t succeeded his father to become the Second God of North Korea, it’s quite likely that he would have pursued a career related to his first love, the silver screen.
Consider: In 1978, Kim had spies kidnap his favorite South Korean actress as part of a straight-up zany scheme to inject a little star power into the staggering North Korean film industry (“BRING HER TO ME! HA HA HA!â€)… He has the power and the nerve to indulge almost any fancy that happens to flutter through his skull.
Up to this point, Lil’ Kim has remained a ripe, but woefully overlooked target for satire: bouffant hair-do, high heels, a weakness for cognac, millions of worshippers and a thumb on the button of a renegade nuclear missile program. What greater fodder could a late night talk show host possibly ever ask for?
The question is: How will this zany, omnipotent powder keg react to satire? His biographer credits him with a certain taste for self-deprecating humor (he once referred to himself as “a midget’s turdâ€), but it seems highly unlikely that anything in his life up to this point could have possibly prepared him for the juvenillian body blows delivered by Parker and Stone. Kim has spent his entire life at the center of the most isolated, fervent personality cult our gray planet has ever known. In his world, people lose their head for failing to bow low enough. A harmless joke at a superior’s expense could quite plausibly result in the wholesale slaughter of one’s entire family. That’s the way things work.
What is Kim Jong-Il going to think when he sees himself as a puppet, teamed up with the likes of (heh, heh) Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin? How long until we read word in the international press that Parker and Stone have been kidnapped and subjected to incessant torture?
True smartasses measure greatness in terms of public hate. Parker and Stone are doing pretty well on that score thus far, but Kim Jong-Il’s temper may well put them on the path to immortality. I await North Korea’s response to Team America with anxious ears.
*Michael Breen â€Kim-Jong Il: North Korea’s Dear Leaderâ€.
Maureen (not verified)
7 years ago
Well, my advice upon seeing the film is to wait until it comes out on DVD to rent it — and then forget to. There were a few "zingers" (like the listing of American achievements in the team ballad including slavery, or the whole parody-of-Hollywood thing, if you're into that) but overall: too much homophobic slapstick, a distinct lack of pokes at American neo-cons, and a cloying "I'm fifteen and know way more than all the rest of you dumb grown ups" attitude (one of the directors, forget which, is a libertarian. Go figure.)