SPOILERS AHEAD!
Get ready. You’ve seen the previews and laughed, wondering what the creators of South Park could possibly do with marionettes. Getting the obligatory “Thunderbirds” reference out of the way first, “Team America: World Police” is “Thunderbirds” f****d in the a*s by “South Park”. Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and a set of like-minded twisted individuals have concocted an absolutely incredible laugh-until-your-head-splits-apart comedic satire that doesn’t care about where to stop, but how to make it all worth your overpriced ticket. They’ve brought genuine entertainment back to mainstream movie theaters. This should have as many scheduled showtimes as possible at every theater across the country, including porno theaters because those guys should have a break anyway.
“Team America: World Police” is, on the outset, about a team who wants those pesky terrorists Jihaded off our planet and those WMDs completely dismantled. For the opening, all the possible bad action movie clichés are parodied, right up to the crappy one-liner and a team member, Carson proposing to his girlfriend Lisa, another team member, before being shot to death. Naturally, the boss of the operation, Spottswoode, wants a replacement for Carson and believes he has found it in Gary Johnston, a Broadway actor who’s currently starring in “Lease: The Musical” and singing about how everyone has AIDS. Spottswoode believes that Gary is the best actor he’s ever seen, possibly the best in the world and wants him on the team, but not before he sucks his c**k as a sign of trust. Spottswoode actually kids about that, and it’s off to the Team America headquarters, right inside Mount Rushmore, where Lincoln’s mouth opens up and Theodore Roosevelt’s hair splits apart whenever the team has to stop the terrorists.
Ben Affleck, Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, Kim-Jong Il, Little George Bush, Liv Tyler, Matt Damon, Michael Bay, Helen Hunt, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Martin Sheen are given fair jabs here, Bush through the subtext of Team America’s screwups and possibly the foreign policies in general. Affleck and Bay are savaged terrifically in a love song that compares caring deeply for someone to how much “Pearl Harbor” sucked. North Korean dictator Kim-Jong Il sings about being lonely in his beliefs, and Garofalo, Tyler, Damon, Hunt, Baldwin, Robbins, Sarandon, and Sheen are all part of the Film Actors Guild. Put the acronym together on your own time. And despite their appearance in “Bowling for Columbine”, Parker and Stone put it to Moore as well, during a protest in front of Team America headquarters. Puppet sex and extended vomiting can’t be forgotten either. The puppet sex was the subject of the news recently regarding the MPAA. They’re a bunch of out-of-touch schmucks anyway, but the scene as it stands now is very much worth it, but I hope the other filmed versions of the scene that didn’t make it are included on the DVD. What’s the big deal with puppet sex anyway?
That’s all I should say. That’s really it in terms of what the film includes anyway. To include more is to slowly reduce the impact of what you’ll find here, a comedic buffet that will likely refill itself every time you see it. “Team America” will probably offend those who can’t take a joke as they see and hear their beloved outspoken celebrities or even Michael Bay bashed. Laugh hard, laugh long, but just laugh at true greatness. Parker and Stone have done it again, multiplied millions of times.
