Believe the hype. Team America: World Police is the funniest movie since, well, South Park. This newest release by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone is insulting, gross, juvenile, and offensive -- everything a 15-year old boy or a grown-up political junkie could hope for.
This is Hollywood's first-ever movie about the Terror War. But it's not about what has happened so far. Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and George W. Bush aren't mentioned, not even once. Team America is a fictional Chapter Two (or perhaps Chapter Three) of what might -- but almost certainly won't -- happen next.
North Korea's Kim Jong Il doles out weapons of mass destruction to Middle Eastern terrorists and orders them planted all over the world. He rigs them to explode all at once, hoping to plunge the globe into anarchy. Meanwhile, the lonely Stalinist invites world dignitaries and Hollywood actors to Pyongyang for a "peace conference" on the eve destruction. It's all up to the soldier-police of Team America to put a stop to his plans.
This is a puppet movie. You can see strings attached throughout the whole thing. The puppets don't walk, they bounce. Fight scenes are rendered by crashing puppets into each other and shaking the strings. There are no live actors. And it's no wonder. None of the Hollywood stars Parker and Stone "enlist" would have returned casting calls. Parker and Stone don't work with real people, anyway. When they aren't playing with puppets they're directing cardboard cut-out hooligan children in South Park.
Team America has no allies. Team America doesn't even seem to have a president. Team America is literally unilateral. Team America is apparently unaccountable. Team America was not elected. Team America just is. And Team America is recklessly, arrogantly, cluelessly destructive.
The movie opens in Paris.
Terrorists walk the streets with a weapon of mass destruction concealed in a
briefcase. A red, white, and blue helicopter appears in the sky. The gunner
fires a missile at the terrorists and knocks over the Eiffel
Tower instead. An
over-the-top jingoistic theme song plays in the background: "America,
Fuck Yeah!" The only
thing missing here is a gloating broadcaster puppet on Fox.
A missile
does hit the terrorists, but only after the bad guys run for shelter in The
Louvre -- which is promptly demolished. Team
Team
The
incompetence on display in Paris only gets worse once Team America makes it to
Egypt. The "actor" heads straight for the terrorist hangout
and...well, let's just say that he's a tad unaware of where in the world he
actually is. He plays a terrorist as convincingly as an Afghan poppy farmer
could pass for Oliver North. He's found out, of course. A chase scene ensues.
The pyramids and the Sphinx are blown up long before any terrorists are.
The Daily
Show's John Stewart, talented as he is, has never skewered the Terror War hawks
so effectively. Unilateralism, unaccountability, ignorance of foreign lands,
shrugging at collateral damage, mindless gung-ho patriotism, it's all there.
But if the first half is leftist, the second half plays as though Ann Coulter
wrote it.
The turning
point comes when Michael Moore, portrayed as a hotdog-chomping "socialist
weasel," straps a bomb to his belly and blows up Mount Rushmore. It's all
downhill for the anti-war left after that.
Kim Jong Il
invites liberal activists from Hollywood, along with world leaders from every
country (except, it seems, from America) to Pyongyang for a farcical
"peace conference" love-in. Alec Baldwin, Janeane Garofalo, Matt
Damon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Susan Sarandon have roles as gun-toting
useful idiots who try to take out the Team America heroes. The Matt Damon puppet
is the dumbest of all. All he can say is his own name like a mouth-breathing
monotone moron. Why Matt Damon is singled so dismissively isn't clear. I sure
hope he can laugh at "himself."
In the end,
Parker and Stone portray the buffoons of Team America as the good guys. They
may be reckless and insensitive, but hey, at least they try to do the right
thing. Kim Jong Il and the Hollywood activists are shot, mutilated, and impaled
for atrocious behavior that isn't even well-meaning.
That's what
makes this movie "conservative." Parker and Stone mock people on both
sides. But no conservatives or defense hawks are singled out personally. Only
fictional righties are ever made fun of, and still they are shown some
affection. There is no affection shown for the lefties. They are dispensed with
contempt.
Even so,
liberals who can handle jokes at their own expense should enjoy this movie much
more than religious conservatives who are bound to be offended by graphic
puppet sex and profanity. Those who swooned over Mel Gibson's The Passion are
advised to stay home.
Team America
indulges the worst Hollywood stereotypes ever. But in doing so it also partly
debunks them. Team America, after all, is a product of Hollywood. And as Roger
L. Simon pointed
out on his blog, "the first major studio release about the War on
Terror is actually in favor of the war." Think of this movie as
Hollywood's self-interrogation, and as evidence that the place is not a
cultural monolith. Parker and Stone did the city they lampooned a favor.
Michael J. Totten is a TCS columnist. Visit his daily Web log at http://michaeltotten.com.
