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The bad boys of raunchy ribaldry are
back on the big screen and deliver the demented goods with their latest
scathing satire in the misbehaving marionette mockery Team America: World
Police. In the capacity as director/co-writer/co-producer, Trey Parker
(along with his calculating cohort Matt Stone) presents what is perhaps
one of the most subversively off-kilter farces that’s designed to take a
potent poke at the outrageous rhetoric concerning our post-9/11 landscape
of jingoism. Never afraid to rake over the coals their latest target of
choice, the treacherous tandem sets their delightfully sneering sights on
an array of frothy fodder that range from commenting on outlandish
action-pack movies to the senseless bickering of liberal-leaning and
right-wing righteousness that cloud our everyday political posturing.
Parker and Stone, known for their wicked wit thanks to their televised
perverse pop cultural cartoon phenomenon South Park, don’t hold back in
terms of providing a glaring dosage of naughtiness and profane
playfulness. The movie misfits are the same delirious duo behind the
devilish ditty that was the hilariously hedonistic hoot South Park:
Bigger, Longer and Uncut. No doubt it’s a deceptive joy to witness the
devious deeds of Parker and Stone as they unleash their twisted exuberance
on the big screen in the form of seemingly innocuous puppets that dare to
say and demonstrate the wacky aggression that’s so laughably evident. As
with all the previous projects that make up the cockeyed creativity of
Parker-Stone’s warped minds, Team America: World Police is an enticing
gut-busting goof that’s crude, cunning, crafty, cold-hearted, and wincing
in its super-coated cynicism. If there was any blatant gesture that would
be an equivalent to the foolishness that dogs our worldwide politics and
penchant for silly-minded sensationalism on the grand scale, Team America:
World Police would gleefully step in as the middle finger to insult and
oddly inform.
As an equal opportunity crass showcase that’s certain to corrupt the
mindset of almost every walk of life personality imaginable, Team America
is cleverly giddy, smart, antagonistic, and caustically ridiculing in its
stinging sentiments. Parker and Stone’s wooden slap-in-the-face
entertainment of politically incorrectness does strangely manage to wave
off the warnings of wholesome hooey that we are force fed in a propaganda
package perpetuated by various media types. This may include the
microscopic contributions of everyone from sanctimonious celebrities to
flag-embracing knee-jerk journalists that offer what their ideal take is
on the condition of America’s vulnerability and strength and its
prominence as the self-appointed center of the global hub. Unassumingly,
this puppet-sprinkled parody is probably the most slickest and satisfying
potty-mouthed political picture to enter the arena of frolicking
filmmaking based on the gumption of raucous grade school scrutiny.
When terrorism runs rampart around the world, our super patriot operatives
known as Team America World Police are on the job in order to quell the
turmoil that threatens our very being. The team’s motivation is quite
simple: eradicate evil wherever and whenever possible. However, when it is
learned that an elaborate and ambitious terrorist attack is being planned
to epic hostile proportions, Team America must take some serious strides
in eliminating this urgent development. Hence, they need to recruit some
new blood in order to defend against this newest challenging mission.
Enter Broadway actor Gary Johnston who’s whisked away from his smash stage
hit “Lease” (Parker and Stone’s giddy knock on “Rent”) in order to help
Team America World Police’s terrorism objectives. While Gary woos everyone
with his signature song “Everyone Has AIDS” (no doubt a back-handed sign
of blasphemy for ardent activists and other sympathizers) in his sellout
show, the team needs him more since he’s resourceful to the cause. Able to
speak foreign languages and assume ideal identities, Gary is sent
undercover to infiltrate the terrorists’ manic activities. Of course the
question begs the following forethought: will Gary and his crafty crew be
able to tap into the seed of doom and stop these creepy cretins from using
the world as their experimental bubble of deviousness?
Moviegoers will most likely recall the nostalgic television show The
Thunderbirds as the immediate inspiration for Parker and Stone’s madcap
marionette mantra that is Team America: World Police. The moviemaking
partners-in-crime, along with co-writer Pam Brady, weave in and out the
outrageous adult-oriented themes and rollicking social commentary that
make Team America more than just a bunch of wily wooden-carved figureheads
spouting off perverse pithy platitudes. Armed with an offbeat intelligence
and off-putting riffs that possess scathing potshots at so-called true
blue American-made authority, Team America: World Police is a diabolically
spunky punch to the political groin that takes no prisoners.
No doubt that Team America: World Police rates right up there in contempt
and chaos with the likes of Michael Moore’s confrontational Fahrenheit
9/11 and its subsequent political knockoffs. What Parker, Stone, and Brady
assembled in their tongue-waging narrative are sardonic and edgy attitudes
that do not hesitate to chastise the conventional acceptance of violence
at the expense of achieving tolerance and peace. There are several
sensationalized sequences that dare to raise the ante concerning America’s
pronounced popcorn approach to world order. Among the tarnished targets
besides its finger-pointing at the political piffle of terrorism and
clueless world leaders are irreverent cracks at action-pack movies that
glorify the mayhem that persists. Everything from Pearl Harbor to Top Gun
is lampooned to highlight how consciously aware we are when allowing
Hollywood to glamorize our need for manufacturing the appreciation for
blood-thirsty “might-makes-right” liberty through fictional and frivolous
wishful-thinking.
Hollywood’s box office role in its overzealous need to stimulate a
feel-good message through its overactive and overbearing entertaining ode
to American dominance in the name of freedom and firepower certainly plays
a farcical factor. Also, Team America: World Police has a twisted time as
its ability to tar and feather some of today’s leftist Tinseltown toadies
is too infectious for words. The usual suspects that get the tawdry
treatment from Parker and Stone include preachy artists Michael Moore,
Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, etc. And although some may argue that
the political players involved in this wooden war-on-terror satire are
already caricatures that are too over-the-top to spoof in the first place,
Parker and Stone could care less and give out the ludicrous lumps anyway.
From an entity such as the conflicted United Nations to presenting
bewildered national leaders that look ridiculous as in America’s George W.
Bush and Korean dictator Kim Jong Il portraying exaggerated pawns in an
indecisive game of delirious chess, Team America is utterly riotous and
absurdly ribald.
One can say that there’s something absolutely anti-establishment about
Parker and Stone’s bankrupt moralistic marionette showcase that’s in many
ways more revealing and bluntly honest in its perceived cockeyed
convictions. Any movie that fearlessly dares to unconventionally take to
task the quagmire of our intense present-day political predicament has to
be tops in anyone’s critical book. Projecting the razor sharp wit about
WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). Hollywood horn blowers known as the
Film Actors Guild (yes, you guessed it—the cheeky acronym F.A.G.) jumping
on the outspoken soapbox instead of sticking to multi-million dollar
scripts. Inspired giggles at self-indulgent musicals and misguided
musicians that sing a self-absorbed tune. Mining attention from an
inexplicable sexual cheap thrill between inanimate objects. Spotlighting
real life political movers and shakers that may be more convincingly
wooden than the Team America puppets that festively mock them. Taking
nasty swipes at fuel-injected filmmakers (read: Michael Bay and Jerry
Bruckheimer) and their empty-headed explosion-induced formulaic flicks
that simultaneously amuses and arouses. Alas, Team America: World Police
certainly doesn’t miss a naughty beat.
If one is looking for sensitivity and a partisan spin to all the madness
that is conjured up in Parker and Stone’s instigated universe that is Team
America: World Police then seek elsewhere because this political puff of
smoke will have you coughing up your lung in hardy hilarity. These
nihilistic puppets may indirectly invite memories of Howdy Doody or
Pinocchio with the snappy strings attached but this is no kiddie ride to
say the least.
Indeed, the unctuous World Police dutifully dominate as an arresting
political satire for the ages. |
