Team America's humor and offensiveness keep it hanging by a string
ANDREW HENRICKSON
Issue date: 10/19/04 Section: Features
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The creators of South Park have done it again. They have managed to offend everyone in the entire world with another one of their offerings.
Team America: World Police is a movie written, produced, directed and featuring the voice talents of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the masterminds behind South Park. Parker and Stone do things that no other producers would ever want in a movie.
After the first ten minutes of this movie, I couldn't believe my eyes or my ears, then the opening credits rolled.
Team America is a movie about a special division of the government sworn to protect our great nation (Parker and Stone stop at nothing to make sure everyone knows how great our nation is) from the terrorists and their weapons of mass destruction.
After they save France from the terrorists (by doing more damage than the terrorists would have done), they hear about a massive attack that could affect the entire world. They must then hire a new member to be an actor (Gary) and somehow get the information from the terrorists by becoming one.
After that fails and the team destroys yet another country (Egypt), Gary quits because he failed the mission and let the team down.
Meanwhile, renegade terrorists from Egypt are attacking Team America and the head terrorist from North Korea, Kim Jong Il, is teaming up with film actors to protest what happened in Egypt. Also, little known to anyone else, Kim Jong II is still planning to destroy the entire world. Team America comes to save the day and is taken captive and Gary must come back to rescue them.
The plot sounds somewhat bland and like a basic save-the-day movie, but there are many things in the story that keep it interesting, like a love octagon between almost the entire group and many, many tie-ins to our current situation with our country.
The script however, is a different story indeed. Name a stereotype for our country and countries involved and it is in this movie. The script potentially offends every ethnic orientation. People who do not have a strong sense of humor should be cautious. It even makes fun of people in our own country from Alec Baldwin to Michael Moore. Basically, the script makes up for the lack of plot.
Lastly, the strangest part of this movie and the other half of what makes it funny, is the fact that the entire movie is acted with marionette puppets. It is really hard to make a movie with those things, but the puppeteers did a great job in making everything believable with puppets. It adds to humor when the puppeteers make the puppets do things that puppets really are not supposed to do because of their limited movement.
If you are looking for a movie that doesn't have much of a plot and is just a bunch of puppets going around blowing up countries, then this isn't your movie. If you are looking for a movie that satirizes our current situation in the war and offends everyone, you might want to give it a try.
Team America: World Police is a movie written, produced, directed and featuring the voice talents of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the masterminds behind South Park. Parker and Stone do things that no other producers would ever want in a movie.
After the first ten minutes of this movie, I couldn't believe my eyes or my ears, then the opening credits rolled.
Team America is a movie about a special division of the government sworn to protect our great nation (Parker and Stone stop at nothing to make sure everyone knows how great our nation is) from the terrorists and their weapons of mass destruction.
After they save France from the terrorists (by doing more damage than the terrorists would have done), they hear about a massive attack that could affect the entire world. They must then hire a new member to be an actor (Gary) and somehow get the information from the terrorists by becoming one.
After that fails and the team destroys yet another country (Egypt), Gary quits because he failed the mission and let the team down.
Meanwhile, renegade terrorists from Egypt are attacking Team America and the head terrorist from North Korea, Kim Jong Il, is teaming up with film actors to protest what happened in Egypt. Also, little known to anyone else, Kim Jong II is still planning to destroy the entire world. Team America comes to save the day and is taken captive and Gary must come back to rescue them.
The plot sounds somewhat bland and like a basic save-the-day movie, but there are many things in the story that keep it interesting, like a love octagon between almost the entire group and many, many tie-ins to our current situation with our country.
The script however, is a different story indeed. Name a stereotype for our country and countries involved and it is in this movie. The script potentially offends every ethnic orientation. People who do not have a strong sense of humor should be cautious. It even makes fun of people in our own country from Alec Baldwin to Michael Moore. Basically, the script makes up for the lack of plot.
Lastly, the strangest part of this movie and the other half of what makes it funny, is the fact that the entire movie is acted with marionette puppets. It is really hard to make a movie with those things, but the puppeteers did a great job in making everything believable with puppets. It adds to humor when the puppeteers make the puppets do things that puppets really are not supposed to do because of their limited movement.
If you are looking for a movie that doesn't have much of a plot and is just a bunch of puppets going around blowing up countries, then this isn't your movie. If you are looking for a movie that satirizes our current situation in the war and offends everyone, you might want to give it a try.