Check Out the Trailer

After seeing clips of this film at Comic Con, I was looking forward to it greatly. The film came out and got some fairly positive reviews. However, there was a host of critics that hated it or at least didn’t think it was “all that” as the kids would say. As I see it, the film is really hit or miss.

The film works brilliantly when it points its satire at cheesy action movies. The heightened conflict and the plot structure are very funny. The opening scene is a perfect example of the satire working. Terrorists arrive in Paris and Team America shows up to blow up the day. After one of the members dies, team leader Spottswoode (Daran Norris, THE CAT IN THE HAT) goes out to recruit Broadway actor Gary Johnston (Trey Parker, SOUT PARK) to join the team. Gary’s artificial conflict with being an actor and being asked to save the world is quite good.

Another place where the film hits the mark is when it uses the movement of the puppets to make fun of action films. The first big hand-to-hand fight in the opening scene between a Team member and a terrorist is hilarious. The puppet sex scene is another highlight. Another is with the use of music, which supplies some of the best laughs and smartest satire.

The sad thing is that the laughs come sparingly at times. Some jokes just don’t work. When the film isn’t really funny, it’s not funny at all. The satire goes terribly wrong when it comes to the depiction of Hollywood actors. The film has a brilliant riff of people falling into three categories – all named after body parts on the lower region of the male and female anatomy. The actors fall into the category, which you could say is the wimpy category. However, the actors aren’t wimps. They’re just as violent as Team America. To make the premise work, the actors should have been absurdly peaceful. This idea works really well when chief weapons inspector Hans Blix tells Kim Jong Il that if he doesn’t let him inspect his palace he will have to write him a really mean letter.

The film is really an equal opportunity offender, but its attack on the left does not coincide with the film’s overall theme. I think the film’s makers Parker and Matt Stone just liked the idea of blowing up realistic looking puppets of George Clooney and Matt Damon and did not really care what it was saying. Though the overall arch of the film falls apart, the puppet work doesn’t. The sets and the puppets are amazing and deserve great praise. The film would not have worked at all if the puppets stunk. I respect the film for having a lot of guts. I recommend this to SOUTH PARK fans and the curious. There is truly no other film like this one, I just wished Parker and Stone would have spent a little more time thinking the thing out. This is missed brilliance.