4M's capsule opinion? PIECE OF SHIT.
Seriously, that's all Team America really is. It's not nearly as funny a movie as it'd like to be, and it's not the biting satire on our times that everybody's making it out to be, and it sure as hell ain't the horrible bit of right-wing propaganda that the chattering classes make it out to be. Let me see if I can't sum it up for you, so you don't have to spend ten bucks and 90 minutes in the company of the Stupid and Doomed:
"Look! We're using action-movie cliches and Gerry Anderson-style marionettes! It's just like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, only with puppets! Ha! Retro-chic irony! LAUGH, DAMMIT!"
"Look! We're using the word 'fag' in a derogatory context... just like it's become the standard for smacktalk in American vernacular... but look! We're using it to call actors fags! Ha! We're edgy! LAUGH, DAMMIT!"
"Look! We're using crude humor! IT'S FUNNY! LAUGH! LAUGH!"
...and I think you get the idea.
It's a shame really, because there are bright spots in Team America. Several of the musical numbers were good for a laugh (the "slow, melancholy" arrangement of the Team America theme song, and the romantic tune "I Miss You As Much As Pearl Harbor Sucked" were the standouts for me), and Kim Jong Il certainly made a hell of a better supervillian than anything I've seen in any Bruckheimer movie. (With the possible exception of the killer asteroid from Armageddon.) And most of the finale, where you could sense Parker & Stone just throwing up their hands, saying "fuck it" and filming Quentin Tarantino's Thunderbirds was a nice, refreshing bit of mindless violence. But puppet-based sex and violence and a list of one-note jokes played over and over do not a complete movie make. If they'd played it straight with the action movie tropes all the way through, Team America would be a neat bit of cult cinema, and it wouldn't make a fucking dime. If they'd just gone straight for the combination of absurdist and grossout musical comedy that they used to fine effect in South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, I'd be willing to call it one of the funniest movies of the year.
(Not counting that hysterical mockumentary about John Kerry everybody's up in arms about... oh, wait, they're serious? Well, shit. There goes the Oscar for Best Comedy...)
As it is though, if you need Puppets Behaving Badly, go rent Meet the Feebles. Otherwise, don't let anybody sucker you into going and seeing this PIECE OF SHIT film in the theaters. You'll only encourage Parker & Stone to make more not-funny-enough movies, and after Baseketball, I'd think we'd have learned our lesson.
Posted by the Fourth Man at October 19, 2004 03:30 PM
Maybe you just over-thought the movie, me and my friends sat through it belly laughing at nearly the whole thing! But hey, maybe it's us, we're easily amused, and it's fun :]
Posted by: Pup at October 19, 2004 07:15 PM