I’ve been an action junkie my entire life, and I’m damn proud of
it. Keep your “Citizen Kane” or “Casablanca” and give me “Commando”
or “Cobra” any day. From the Holy Trinity of Arnold, Sly and Bruce
to peons like Van Damme and Lundgren, no other genre is so dear to
my heart. “Team America: World Police” is a guided missile aimed at
the formulaic tenets of the Bay and Bruckheimer School of Schlock,
and the results left me weeping my seat. Not from sadness, but from
joy–“Team America” is the most raucously hilarious film I’ve seen
in years.
The plot is gloriously oversimplified. Depending on the viewer’s
political leanings, “Team America” unfolds as a lampoon of
paint-by-numbers action films or the ethnocentric, narrow view of
world events presented in the American media. Terrorists lurk
around the globe, functioning as a singular entity bent on
destroying life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Only Team
America can protect freedom from these sinister forces, U.N.
sanctions be damned.
Team America is a motley bunch of genre stereotypes. There’s
Joe, the All-American Nebraska quarterback; Chris, a chain-smoking,
profanity-spewing hardass; Lisa, the tough-as-nails temptress with
a haunted past. Rounding out the cast are the Spock-like psychic
Sarah and Jedi actor Gary.
Gary’s profession is a running-joke, flipped bird to Hollywood
pomposity. Our Light Side Gary uses the “power of acting” to noble
ends, donning ridiculous amounts of facial hair and infiltrating
Arab terrorist networks to stay a step ahead of evil.
Opposing him is an elite cadre of Sith Lord, Hollywood A-list
actors who believe their job as actors is to “read the newspapers
and repeat what they say like it’s our own opinion.”
Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and the rest
of the Film Actors Guild (figure it out) are absolutely skewered in
some of the most savage satire ever to grace the silver screen.
When Kim Jong II cons the guild to speak at a peace summit while
he detonates WMDs across the globe, it’s Team America to the
rescue. The posse of puppets travel to Paris, Cairo and
“Durkadurkastan,” eradicating historic landmarks and espousing
witty one-liners.
That’s right, puppets. The trailer is no ruse, and there’s no
“gotcha” halfway through where the real movie gets underway. Parker
and Stone have resurrected a lost art of theatre with triumphant
results.
Sets are gorgeously rendered, down to the most minute of
details. The Times Square where Gary performs in “Lease,” a
“Rent”-“Grease” hybrid hallmarked by a showstopping “Everyone has
AIDS” number, is jaw-dropping in its realism and captured
beautifully by the cinematography of Bill Pope (“The Matrix”).
Kim Jong Il, international bogeyman, is reduced to a goofy
caricature that can’t even pronounce his l’s correctly. His somber
ballad, “I’m Ronery,” is an Oscar-worthy ditty that nearly trumps
the outrageous “Blame Canada” from “South Park.”
Without a doubt, the film’s money shot is the outrageous,
ballyhooed sex scene between Gary and Lisa. The tryst underwent a
cold shower for an eventual R-rating, but they still manage to get
kinky in ways never imagined by the average Barbie owner.
If “South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut” didn’t rocket Trey
Parker and Matt Stone to the forefront of American satire, then
“Team America” will. Its gags are Kubrickian in their complexity:
wanton vulgarity unheard since the heyday of Kevin Smith, a Shock
and Awe campaign against the action canon and razor-sharp political
satire that would turn “Daily Show” writers green with envy.
Rare is the film that has both poli-sci and phys-ed majors
rolling in the aisles, but “Team America” is that film. No strings
attached, “Team America” is a crazy, comedic masterpiece for an
equally mad state of world affairs.
