ToxicPurity Reviews Team America: World Police

Short Review: WATCH THIS FILM! FUN-NEEEE!

Longer Review: The very instant I first heard about this film I knew it would be funny. The guys who created South Park, satirising America's War On Terror, with marionettes.

Not since Peter Jackson's Meet The Feebles (1989) has there been an R-rated musical action-comedy puppet film like this. Or ever, come to think of it. It has been described as an equal opportunity offensive film. It has a plot loosely based around a conspiracy by Kim Jong Il to use the Film Actors' Guild (F.A.G.) to destroy the world. Never mind, it's not important. It has the single most explicit sex scene you are ever going to see outside of a porn flick, and which you will be able to watch with your loved ones. (And remember, it was the sex scene they had to re-cut nine times before the censors were placated; the decapitations, maulings, and assorted bood and gore of the violence was okay, but puppets performing fellatio was a no-no.)

Skribe and I scored a double pass to the preview screening tonight at Greater Union Innaloo thanks to the wonderful folks at Flicktease, and I can honestly say this is the funniest film we've seen all year. Probably the funniest the rest of the audience had seen, too, judging by all the laughter, groans, and applause.

From the opening sequence which introduces Team America and leading to the accidental destruction of the Eiffel Tower and the Arch of Triumph, to the unrepeatable inspirational speech at the end, this film just kept topping itself. You will laugh as the over-zealous Team America blows up half a city to kill one terrorist, you will groan as Gary pukes on and on and on, you will leave the cinema humming Kim Jong Il's song "I'm So Ronery".

South Park purists may bitch that the film has recycled some of the gags and even a song from the cartoon series, but they're missing the point. Team America is supposed to be a pastiche of bad over-the-top action flicks; it's devouring its own genre as much as it's drawing on the body of previous work created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. If you can't laugh at yourself, if you aren't prepared to deal with parody, then don't see this film.

Astoundingly, Team America somehow manages to be both biting satire and (apparently) proudly patriotic at the same time, leaving one with the conclusion that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are among the very few USians who have mastered the fine art of irony. If that's not enough, you have to watch it for the sheer beauty of the production design and technical wizardry. This is beyond Thunderbirds, but it is also delightfully self-aware, and utterly ludicrously hilarious in true South Park mode.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone were right: sex, death, terrorism... is funnier with puppets.

I'm rating this 9 out of 10 instead of giving it the full 10, because the film-makers should have put in longer gaps between gags so the audience wouldn't keep laughing over dialogue and missing the next joke.

TIP: Stay til the end of the credits to hear Kim Jong Il's other song, which explains why he does what he does in the film, and why he therefore hates Alec Baldwin so much.