Team America

[dude1394]

Maybe shouldn't be here, but this sounds funny.

Team America
by kos
Mon Oct 11th, 2004 at 05:46:03 GMT

I got tickets for an early screening for the new movie from the South Park guys. Rather than carboard cutouts, like South Park, the movie uses puppets -- marionettes, actually.

The apparent goal of the movie was to make it a satirical jab at every facet of the "war on terror". Problem is, I think our side got the worst of it.

Team America, global police, wreak havoc everywhere they go in pursuit of terrorists. In the opening scene, they take out half of Paris, including all of its cultural icons, in order to kill three terrorists with an WMD. The WMD couldn't have done a better job itself. Ironic! And kind of funny. But that's about the worst the warmongers get.

What do we get? Peacenik liberal Hollywood actors coddling up to terrorist regimes (ha ha). If you hate Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin and Janeane Garofalo, then you'll love seeing them get killed in a bloody battle with Team America.

One dead Rush Limbaugh would've attoned for using Michael Moore as a suicide bomber. Perhaps massacring Fox's whole afternoon lineup and Tom DeLay would've balanced out the dead actors. But oh well. Me, I didn't care for it.

The movie does best when satirizing blockbuster movies (one dimensional characters, groan-inducing one-liners, stilted love scenes), or when showing us the limits of what marionettes can do on film (they don't strut, fight, or have sex too smoothly). The soundtrack was stellar, and gut-busting funny.

The politically, the movie would've been better served to dish out the satire in a bipartisan fashion. Like the JibJab Brothers.