Team America: World Police

by Rick Curnutte

Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University. He is a founding member of the Central Ohio Film Critics Association and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

We've had an influx of politically charged films this year, seemingly more than in any other recent year. Most of them have been documentaries of varying degrees of quality. I was thrilled when I heard about Matt Stone and Trey Parker (South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut) tackling post-9/11 issues with strung-up marionettes.

It's too bad, then, that Team America: World Police is such a waste of ripe material. Ostensibly a send-up of Bruckheimer-era action films by way of Thunderbirds, Team America delivers some big laughs early on, but loses focus and falls flat in its final act.

Team America is about a group of red, white and blue-blooded soldiers of patriotism called to action by a nefarious terrorist plot, secretly set in motion by the ludicrously lampooned Kim Jong Il (is it really still funny that Asians sometimes replace "L"s with "R"s?). Most of the humor comes from seeing puppets do things that they normally wouldn't do (like massacre Middle Eastern terrorists, vomit and fuck doggy-style). This only sustains the picture for a half hour or so. After the novelty has worn off, Team America collapses under the weight of mismanaged ideas.

Perhaps the lamest of all is that Parker and Stone don't target anyone truly involved with our current climate of disenfranchised politics. There is no George W. Bush, no Tony Blair, no John Ashcroft. All we get is uber-"liberals" like Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin and a goofy North Korean dictator who sounds like a profane Elmer Fudd.

The South Park boys skewered the MPAA and the extreme right wondrously in Bigger, Longer & Uncut. By distancing themselves from the real problems with what's going on in the Middle East, Park and Stone have essentially made their entire exercise numbing and impotent.

The puppetry is outstanding, and the production values are immaculate (including award-worthy work by Bill Pope, Team America's Director of Photography), but they are, unfortunately, in service of an ultimately mundane affair.

There's a great deal of smoke here...but very little fire.