2008 Woodie Awards
'Freedom costs $1.05'
None None
Issue date: 10/20/04 Section: Entertainment
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"Team America" spoofs the action/disaster movie genre with which Jerry Bruckheimer and his cohorts have inundated the nation for years. The film is performed via marionette puppets (à la "Thunder-birds"), with Parker and Stone's milking every ounce of comedy they can as they force their puppets into awkward and humorous situations.
The plot of "Team America" revolves around a special-forces police group that traipses around the globe "protecting freedom" by recklessly destroying terrorists and their surroundings, which many times include various priceless monuments.
The group consists of Hollywood-action flick stereotypes, and the plot spoofs the bad writing we have come to sadly accept from those movies.
The team's lair is hidden inside Mount Rushmore (in the presidents' heads specifically), and I promise that you will never tire of seeing their heads open up and spray out "Thunder-birds"-esque vehicles and other bits of silliness.
Due to the graphic nature of this film, a warning must be issued. This film features the most graphic and illicit puppet behavior since Peter Jackson's "Meet the Feebles."
The film originally garnered an NC-17 rating, until a sex scene (no, really) was edited to reduce the rating to R. I am fairly desensitized to vulgar satire, but I found it hard to believe that the scene in question was softened enough to attain an R rating.
If you are already a fan of Parker and Stone, you can expect more of the same - and then some. However, if you do not like their work, you have been forewarned.
But is the film funny?
Well yes, but it is not up to the standards set by the trailers. The political jokes are actually few and far between; politics and current events are but a loose framework upon which the humor is hung. Gung-ho American imperialism, peacenik celebrities and world leaders all fall into the satirical trap of "Team America."