Release Date: October 15, 2004
The Voices of: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa, Daran Norris
Directed by: Trey Parker
Written by: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Pam Brady
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
MPAA Rating: R (graphic, crude and sexual humor, violent images, strong language; all involving puppets)
Despite being released in an election year when Hollywood seemed so eager to put its thumb on the scales, the raunchy, offensive, and sometimes hilarious Team America: World Police has little beyond the obvious spin to put on such hot-button issues as the war on terror, the politics of fear, and weapons of mass destruction. Historians may eventually be able to draw a connection between some 2004 films, like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and the election’s outcome, but Team America won’t be part of that group. For longevity’s sake, this is a good thing. The film, which was directed by Trey Parker, is much funnier when it asks pointed questions about some longstanding Hollywood traditions. Like, why do actors have to make absurdly naïve political statements? And why do Michael Bay’s movies always suck?
The answers to these questions (actors are politically outspoken because they’re secretly in league with North Korean dictators and/or possibly mentally disabled, and Bay movies are awful because, well, they just are) are part of the smorgasbord of limited but effective fun in Team America. It is itself a satire of one of Bay’s overblown productions, in which a squad of American commandoes -- the titular Team America, consisting of squad leader Joe (voiced by Parker), psychologist Lisa (Kristen Miller), martial arts expert Chris (Parker’s creative partner, Matt Stone), the possibly clairvoyant Sarah (Masasa), and Gary (Parker again), an actor hired by the team to help them infiltrate terrorist networks -- charges recklessly around the world, chasing terrorists and leaving destruction in their wake. Headed up by the slightly berserk but immaculately dressed Spottswoode (Daran Norris), their latest and gravest adventure yet involves stopping a plot of world destruction led by the North Korean psychopath Kim Jong Il (Parker yet again).
Additionally, it is also an homage to the old “Thunderbirds” TV show, filmed entirely with puppets instead of actors. And it is a faithful entry into the oeuvres of Parker and Stone (who co-wrote the script with Pam Brady), best known as the creators of the animated television series “South Park.” Fans of that show’s blend of musical comedy and irreverent, obscene humor will not be disappointed by Team America.
Those who will be disappointed are those who expected that Parker and Stone’s decision to hijack some topics of political significance for their latest roast would lead to a more intelligent and pointed comedy. But they dance around the subject before dropping it altogether: Beyond the plain-as-day observations that, post-September 11, some in America opted for a gung-ho go-it-alone approach to the war on terror (crystallized in the movie’s pseudo-theme song, “America! Fuck Yeah!”) while others raised persistently dovish objections (depicted in the antiwar personalities of the fictional Film Actors Guild, or F.A.G.), Team America is still dominated by Parker and Stone’s irreverent and inarticulate sense of humor. You can see this in the lyrics to one of the other musical numbers, a romantic ballad that takes its shots at Hollywood. “I miss you like Michael Bay missed the mark in Pearl Harbor,” goes an early line, but, perhaps afraid that its audience won’t get the point, the song drops all pretenses by the chorus: “All I’m trying to say is that Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you.”
But this is not meant to belittle Parker and Stone’s style. Team America delivers juvenile humor in spades. What I mean is that if you are going to get any satisfaction out of watching Team America, you must accept it on its own, debauched terms -- which includes abandoning any sensibilities you may have about pretty much everything. The Arab terrorists, for instance, speak an undecipherable gibberish mostly consisting of various formulations of words like “jihad” and “Mohamed,” and the North Korean soldiers never seem to say anything other than “ping pong.” The Americans, for their part, don’t get off much easier -- in an early scene in Paris, they destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Arc d’Triomphe, and the Louvre, and when they head to Egypt, they leave the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx as piles of smoking rubble. The movie is also sometimes comically violent, grotesque, and obscene. When Kim Jong Il can’t shake the U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix (Parker once more), he has him fed to the sharks. In another scene, a drunk Gary throws up in an alley behind a bar for what seems minutes on end (for no particular reason, other than that massive quantities of vomit are funny). And, in one of the movie’s (surprisingly) funniest scenes, Gary and Lisa have sex in a variety of graphic positions.
The much-talked-about sex scene, which nearly got the film stuck with an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, is indicative of Team America’s greatest comedic strengths as well as its most obvious weaknesses. A substantial part of the humor comes from the puppets’ nature: the limited range of motion in their arms, or the way their legs dangle uselessly beneath them. The strings by which the puppeteers operate the characters are plainly obvious in the background; Parker and Stone make no effort to hide them, probably to achieve the half-complete look that has come to characterize their productions (think of the animation in “South Park,” which looks like it gets cobbled together in five minutes out of construction paper and Elmer’s glue). It almost goes without saying that many of the jokes wouldn’t be funny at all if this were a live-action production.
At the same time, the puppets look extraordinary -- much better than the “Thunderbirds” props from the 60’s -- and they allow Parker and Stone to get away with murder. Many of the biggest laughs come from the most offensive scenes, and Team America lands a number of comedic body blows by way of ethnic and sexual stereotypes (typical of any Stone and Parker production, there are significant undercurrents of xenophobia and homophobia). But despite this, no one will take the movie seriously (other than, apparently, the MPAA); after all, it’s just a bunch of puppets.
But that knife cuts both ways. Team America is not the pointed political commentary that it could have been, and it is only sporadically funny, on par with your average episode of “South Park.” If you’re part of the audience that can’t understand why the election-year fervor of 2004 seems to have been more intense than most, a lightweight comedy like this will be right up your alley: It takes potshots at both right-wing nut jobs and liberal sissies, and doesn't come to any conclusions other than that Michael Bay movies really suck. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a full-scale current events lampoon, the kind of in-the-moment levity that can serve as a release valve for a pressure-cooker election year, Team America will probably prove too broad or too dull for you.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)