Viking Night - Team America: World Police
By Bruce Hall
April 8, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
These are all things worth examining during a time of war, when anxiety runs high at all points on the political spectrum. The only question in my mind is, would it work without all the dick jokes? I think that’s really the mark of quality satire - how well does it pair with dick jokes? Well, there’s probably no movie ever made better suited to test this than Team America: World Police. Maybe you’re a flag waving, chest thumping, Toby Keith listening-to redneck. Maybe you’re a full on tree hugging hippie whose Toyota Prius permanently reeks of patchouli. Or, maybe you’re normal. Either way, you’ve probably heard American foreign policy referred to as some kind of World Police force. Some people see the most powerful country in the history of the world recklessly projecting power around the globe, meddling in the affairs of other nations, trying to force them all to adopt our values and live the way we do.
I’m not here to take sides on this, but I guess I wouldn’t want the Canadian government trying to force me to watch hockey or put mayonnaise on my delicious Freedom Fries. On the other hand, if Brazil wants me to assimilate into their society of six foot tall supermodels, I already have the paperwork filled out. So, the joke behind Team America is “What if we really did have a hyper-stylized paramilitary attack force ready to penetrate enemy territory and take down terrorist scumbags with extreme prejudice? And what if they had brightly colored vehicles and uniforms that let everyone know they weren’t just badasses...they were AMERICAN badasses? And what if they had a bitchin’ theme song? Oh...and there’s one more thing...what if they were puppets?
Wait, what? Yes, puppets. Apparently there was a TV show back in the '60s called Thunderbirds. It was about a hyper-stylized paramilitary attack force ready to penetrate enemy territory and take down terrorist scumbags with extreme prejudice. But this was back when “terrorism” was a thing that existed only in comic books, and some place called Vietnam that everyone will probably forget about by next year. So, Thunderbirds was a terrible show with a terrible theme song that sounded like it was written by your mom, and the cast was made up entirely of hideous, dead-eyed marionettes. Google the show - today, our prisons are probably full of gray haired old men who never amounted to anything, the image of those horrifying puppets still seared into their minds - even after stabbing their own eyes out with a shrimp fork.
Which brings us to 2004, when the creators of the first cartoon to almost start World War III decided to appropriate the look for their new movie. Team America opens the only way an action movie about puppets CAN open, which is a shot of a marionette using a marionette. We’re in France, that magical place that has mimes and the Eiffel Tower and where it’s okay to drink wine at nine in the morning. A group of obvious Islamic terrorists attempt to exchange what is obviously a nuclear bomb in a briefcase. Before they can, a set of red white and blue attack vehicles arrive, and Team America eliminates the threat, along with every significant landmark in Paris. They lose a member during the battle, an event that sows deep seeds of division in the group. When it becomes clear the “terrorists” (the word is used in what I assume is an intentionally generic way) intend to strike back, Team America must replace their fallen man with a new one. But he’ll be forced to call upon to use the full range of his acting skills (they decide to hire a real actor to “act” his way behind enemy lines) to unravel the deadly plot that threatens to tear apart the world, and more importantly, Team America itself.
Did you already forget that it’s about puppets? It sounds like a pretty standard action potboiler, and it is. Only, it’s delivered in the faintly cerebral-but-mostly-sophomoric way you used to love every week on South Park - until you finally grew up. It’s not that I can’t appreciate the shout out to a syndicated television show that once horrified me as a child. And it’s not that I have a problem with hot, steamy puppet sex. And I absolutely appreciate the movie’s willingness to target everyone, from left to right, in an attempt to illustrate how quick most of us are to give in to emotional extremes in times of national peril. Yeah, I get it. It’s just that when you leave yourself no boundaries of any kind, lack of restraint begins to look like lack of judgment.
Team America actually does a fairly decent job of making its point, but Parker and Stone’s propensity to push boundaries in a self conscious way results in an uneven experience that’s about 80 percent dick jokes punctuated by a few moments of brilliance. If that's good enough for you, then so be it. But whether you think they’re geniuses or extremely talented morons, I’d say the duo have their best work still ahead of them (translation: they can do better). Team America is yet another one of those movies that deserves to be seen simply because of its novelty, and I tend to like these kinds of movies as much as any other. It usually means that whether the project succeeds or fails, someone made a genuine effort to break new ground, and that’s something that doesn’t happen often enough in Hollywood.
And if that's not enough, former North Korean dictator/psychotic human tater-tot Kim Jong Il has a musical number you'll be giggling about for days.