Team America: World Police

To say that I'm disappointed with Team America: World Police would make it sound like I didn't like the movie. I don't want to give that impression -- it's a very funny film. When dealing with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, you expect raunchy, sophomoric humor combined with razor-sharp satire, and you get that here, most definitely.

But.

What starts out as a hilarious parody of Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer action films descends, in the second half, into cheap scatalogical humor, ludicrous social commentary, and the worst gay joke I've ever seen. And the most irritating part about the whole thing is that none of it seems to have a point -- Matt and Trey just want to piss everybody off, for no reason other than their own amusement. And trust me -- they are the only ones who are going to find some of this stuff funny.

But let's start with the good stuff. Team America are a group of violent, narcissistic yahoos, storming across the globe in their red-white-and-blue planes and helicopters, saving the world from terrorists by blowing up everything they see (their assault to save France does indeed take out the terrorists, but wipes out the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe in the process). They are often accompanied by loud rock music, like the song "America -- Fuck Yeah!". In short: typical American action heroes. Their opening scene contains pretty much every single action movie cliche you've ever seen, and it really is hilarious. Not to mention some rather witty subtitles: every scene which takes place in a country other than the US features a subtitle declaring the place, it's continent, and (in a brilliant touch) its distance from America. A few lines of dialogue are thrown in to both pander to and mock the typical idiotic American audience member. ("They're planning to meet in Cairo." "Cairo: that's in Egypt.")

Team America keeps their headquarters inside a hollowed-out Mt. Rushmore. They get their intelligence from I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E., a not-so bright AI, and their orders from their benefactor, Spottswoode. And though Team America is the best in the world, they need help: terrorists have a WMD, but in a hidden location. They need to infiltrate the terrorists and find the weapons. "We need an actor!" Spottswoode says.

They find him on Broadway, performing a play called Lease which features the song "Everybody has AIDS." Yeah. His name is Gary, and he joins the team after the requisite "This isn't for me" scene and a hilarious montage to a song that declares "Freedom ain't free...freedom costs a buck-oh-five."

So we're good, so far. We keep moving right along, and everything's just fine.

But Parker and Stone clearly have other things in mind. Like blasting leftist Hollywood actors for no reason other than their being easy targets. The Film Actors Guild (that's Film Actors Guild, which provides an acronym I'm sure you can discern on your own), led by Alec Baldwin, denounces the actions of Team America. Other celebrities show up, too, and they eventually become entangled in a plot with Kim Jong Il that involves worldwide catastrophic destruction. Except for Michael Moore, who shows up for just long enough for Matt and Trey to make fun of him for being fat. Oh, aren't we clever.

Once the actors show up, the satire loses its bite and the film starts to fall apart. The activism of the Film Actors Guild is relentlessly mocked and put on equal footing with the terrorism itself. The message becomes "Arguing with America is just as bad as attacking America." And hey -- good for you if you believe that. But what about the first thirty minutes, when Team America are shown to be thoughtless, brainless, heartless bullies who care for no one but themselves? Are we supposed to support mindless, idiotic violence in the name of America?

Matt and Trey attempt to make their point with a big speech in the final scene, which equates everyone in the world to "dicks," "pussies," or "assholes." Yes, more cheap seventh-grade humor. And the speech doesn't make sense in the context of the film: if the dicks (Team America and the violent warmongers) need the pussies (the actors) to keep them from "fucking too much" (their targets being the assholes, the terrorists, "who just want to shit all over everything"), then why, two minutes earlier, were we expected to cheer when T.A. fed Sean Penn to "panthers" (housecats, actually, in the last truly amusing moment in the film) and set Tim Robbins on fire?

In reality, I don't think they agree with either side. Team America is their cheap jab at everyone involved in the war on terrorism (though it should be noted that the White House gets a free pass, with Team America representing American government and warmongering all by themselves). But it's a little too cheap. And for every moment that made me laugh, there was another that made me cringe and scoff at its immaturity.

I did laugh hard, though. In its best moments, Team America: World Police is the same type of brilliant, subversive humor we're used to from South Park. Coming out of the theater, a friend accused me of not liking it -- which I did, actually, at least half of it. He said I was pissed because it wasn't as leftist as I thought it would be. But really, that's not it. I'm disappointed because I know how talented Parker and Stone are and can be, and in this time ripe for satire, they can think of nothing better to do than play with puppets and call everybody "fags." It's a shame.

Rating: ***1/2