Originally published 11/1/04
Team America: World Police
Director: Trey Parker
Writers: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Pam Brady
Producers: Scott Rudin, Matt Stone, Trey Parker
Starring the voices of: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa, Daran Norris, Phil Hendrie, Maurice LaMarche
-PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
-Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
It’s a dangerous, dangerous thing to assume that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park and the brains/voices behind Team America: World Police, have any agenda beyond making you laugh.
Dumber and more hostile people than them have suggested that celebrities who speak out against war are giving aid to the enemy, which is exactly what happens in the movie. The catch is, the people who’ve suggested this have never been funny at it. And I doubt Parker and Stone really believe it. But I do think they consider it funny. And maybe it is inherently funny that famous actors believe they can change the world, but it can’t be discounted that the climax of the movie involves, well, good acting changing the world. And thus a clear message beyond universal mockery eludes us again.
I will not attempt to even guess at Parker and Stone’s politics, much less criticize them. My criticism is reserved solely for their humor.
Case in point – showing a Michael Moore marionette shoving hot dogs in his mouth – not funny. Having a computer damaged by Moore, in an incongruously lackadaisical voice (provided by radio personality Phil Hendrie), report “we were attacked by a fat socialist weasel” – funny. And I say this as someone who’s glad we have Michael Moore in this world.
The story feels familiar because it’s a bald-faced rip from any number of Hollywood summer testosterone fests, most of them produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. “Team America” travels the world in high-tech vehicles a la fellow puppet travelers the Thunderbirds, protecting us from terrorists and WMD’s and causing plenty of damage in the process. We meet them battling turban-clad brutes in France, where between their one-liners and kung-fu they manage to demolish most of Paris on behalf of “freedom”.
Their newest recruit is Gary (Parker), a Broadway actor fresh off of a starring role in the hit musical Lease. Spottswoode (Daran Norris), Team America’s commander, thinks Gary is one of America’s most talented actors, and because he can speak foreign languages, is ideal for missions impersonating terrorists.
He does not fit in at first with Team America’s commandos, who are still mourning the loss one of their own in Paris. One of them, Chris (Stone), has a particular grudge against actors whose roots are too painful to reveal.
But, with a glue-on beard and a little gibberish, Gary manages to pass himself off as a terrorist and a Team America mission (typically, exploding just about everything around it) is a rousing success. And suddenly he’s got the eye of beautiful Teammate Lisa (Kristen Miller), and the two are consummating their romance in a scene which defies summary, description and belief. And you thought that John Cusack’s marionette shows in Being John Malkovich pushed the boundaries of taste…
Actually, it is legitimately amazing just how versatile, and emotive, these marionettes are. It’s hard to believe at least a little computer gimmickry isn’t at work here and there, but that aside it’s clear that Parker & Stone have found yet another medium with which to practice their calculated balance of tackiness and hidden sophistication.
In this day and age they could certainly make the wires invisible if they wanted to, but seeing them there becomes part of the humor (much like the swearing in South Park often ends up funnier because it’s bleeped.) Big laughs come from seeing just how self-serious these marionettes are, and how expansively elaborate the world they inhabit is (every foreign land they visit has a large, bustling marketplace that is in ruins by the end of the scene).
Indeed the crisis for Team America eventually becomes global, when the real supervillain we should have been paying attention to, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il (Parker again, sounding like Cartman but replacing his “l”’s with “r”’s.), reveals his plans to rule the world. And that Il has allied himself with the “greatest actor in the world”, Alec Baldwin (Maurice LaMarche) in order to provide a distracting smokescreen of handwringing and peacenikitude. Baldwin leads a literal army of liberal celebrities, all of whom are too busy spouting invective against rich corporations and arrogant over-aggressive American troops to notice WMD’s being smuggled around the world right under their nose. For this, they get a most bloody comeuppance.
Parker and Stone’s humor works best when keeping you off-balance, when the jokes come fast enough to leave you gobsmacked at how willing they are to zag in shocking or simply absurd directions. We have seen in any number of movies the scene where the hero abandons his comrades, feeling guilty and responsible for some sort of disaster. And we have seen the scene where he drinks himself into a self-loathing stupor (most movies spare us the resultant projectile vomiting. This one doesn’t.)
But just try to believe the loyalty test Spottswoode demands of Gary when the actor comes back with a sense of renewed determination. Then enjoy the moment when you realize Gary is actually going to do it.
As with the South Park movie there are biting showtunes, from the guitar-wailing anthem “America, F*** Yeah!” to a wistful love song which compares how much someone misses a girl to how incredibly bad one particular Jerry Bruckheimer movie is (it sounds weird, I know, but it works). And there are any number of opportunities to upend movie clichés – like all blockbuster heroes, Gary has a tragedy in his past which haunts him, and Lisa tries to console him by declaring “Gary, you can’t blame yourself for what gorillas did.” Plenty of flesh-and-blood actresses in Jerry Bruckheimer movies have had to say equally ridiculous words with a straight face. This is, ultimately, the core of the movie’s humor.
And so it comes down to the final arbitration – is the thing funny? It is – laugh-out-loud ridiculous, even the way a marionette cocks his head can get a chuckle, so satirically on target is the movie’s choice of medium. It’s not quite at the level of the South Park movie, from which it recycles more than a few jokes and plot elements, but it’s still well worth your time and money. And in a season where everything, and I mean everything, has been hauled onto the political battlefield, you can be safe in the knowledge that anyone who cites Team America in a serious ideological discussion is as much a victim of this movie as any of the puppets on-screen.