Team America: World Police

Reviewed by Rich Drees

     In the 7 years since the cartoon series South Park first premiered on cable television, it has grown from being an hysterically funny and frequently ribald comedy about growing up to an hysterically funny and frequently ribald social satire, deconstructing current events and pop culture trends with a sarcastic intelligence that spares no sides. Now the show’s two creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, have turned their keen eyes and razor wit towards a new target. The result is Team America: World Police, a riotously funny satirical jab at the politics of the War on Terror wrapped in a parody of overblown summer action films.

     Oh, and the film’s cast in entirely made up of marionettes.

     After one of their members is killed while apprehending terrorists in Paris, the members of Team America, a world policing organization, recruit Broadway actor Gary (voiced by Parker) to help them infiltrate a terrorist stronghold in an ongoing hunt for wayward weapons of mass destruction. Although their raid in Cairo turns out to be a bust, they do learn that the real mastermind behind the terrorist attacks around the world are being masterminded by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.

     Director Parker is sharp enough to open the film mocking its marionette conceit. The first shot shows a poorly drawn backdrop of Paris with two crudely built marionettes being badly worked in front of it when the camera suddenly pulls back to expose the marionettes operated by a much finer crafted and worked puppet as just one part of a breathtakingly detailed Parisian set. In one fell swoop Parker manages to allay any viewer fears about seeing a “puppet movie” with a reveal that showcases a level of craftsmanship that one might not expect. To be sure, there are still some things that are decidedly low-tech. Since there are no big computer generated effects sequences, exploding buildings are revealed to be nothing more than carved Styrofoam with pictures of the actual building glued on. But the depth of detail brought to all of the sets, including an open air market in Cairo and New York City’s Times Square, is jaw-dropping. That initial shot is also just the first of many examples that show that Parker has a better mastery of staging action sequences that many more experienced helmers in the action genre.

     The marionettes are finely crafted by the Chiodo Brothers, who are known for their stop motion short films. The characters have a wide variety of subtle facial movements hitherto unseen in any kind of similar work. Of course, Parker seems to delight in undercutting any verisimilitude this groundbreaking work may create by suddenly having the marionettes walk or fight in a patently bad (and funny) way.

     The comedy works on several levels in this film. On one level, Team America mocks the more liberal side of the political spectrum, specifically actors who turn activists. But on another level, it also subtly mocks the pandering patriotism of the bloated action films of director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. There are gross out jokes and obvious riffs on movies like Star Wars. Subtler bits of humor include an overabundance of product placement and a jab at American ethnocentricity where every foreign location in the film is introduced with a subtitle showing how far it is away from the United States.