Team America: World Police Review

Let me get this out of the way now. This movie is a puppet movie. Yes, puppet actors. Marionettes if you wanna get technical. However, this is in no way a movie that's suitable for kids. It's rated R, and for good reason. The makers of the movie are the same people who created the south park cartoon on Comedy Central, which is a very funny show, but not intended for anyone who is easily offended by racial, sexual, or political humor. The movie uses language that would make a drunken sailor ashamed.

With that disclosure out of the way, the movie is actually very funny. There's a group of anti-terrorism warriors called Team America. They're out to police the world and hunt down and annihilate terrorists. On the opposite side of the spectrum you've got the terrorists, Kim Jong Il, and those dirty commies, the hollywood liberal activists. The movie revolves around Team America stopping an imminent attack with the help of a new recruit.

They parody the action movie genre, bash one major action movie and director by name, and take shots at all parties, regardless of their status as american or anti-american. This is part of what makes the movie so good. You get to see an exaggeration of the general groups/types of people involved in the war on terror and the people who comment on that war. This is the humor that I'd call "higher level" humor. It's the basis for the movie, and it sets up the smaller gags that are usually dominated with crass humor (which is still funny, like it or not).

This seems to be the theme with the movies/shows that Matt Stone and Trey Parker make. They always have humor of two types: a high-level somewhat sophisticated humor (mixed with social commentary), and vulgar humor. This movie is no different.

The humor/irony in the basic plot is the setting for the first type of humor. They created a group of people called Team America, who police the world looking for terrorists, with no regard for what happens to countries or people who get in the way. In addition, they created an opposition to them, the terrorists, hollywood liberals, and Kim Jong Il. When you're not realizing the irony in how true some of the parallels between these groups and real life are, you're getting a good dose of dirty jokes/gags. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just making a comparison between all the movies and shows that I've seen that feature Stone and Parker.

Anywho, the real gem of the movie are the songs. "I'm so ronery", sung by Kim Jong Il, "America, @#$% Yeah!", and "The End of an Act" are my personal favorites. A close second to the great music would have to be the marionettes. They're all styled very well, with more expressiveness than I've ever seen using puppets.

Before I end the review, I can't go without mentioning Kim Jong Il. His character is great... due in equal parts to the great job the marionette creaters did with making him look so similar to the real Kim Jong Il, and Trey Parker doing such a funny Chinese (I know, it's North Korea) voice.

Kim Jong Il in his Castle of Doom

So, in closing, if you're over 18, and you've got a sense of humor that can appreciate political humor with a healthy dose of crude jokes and filthy language, then by all means, see this movies. It's a good movie, and might be worth the $7.25+, but is probably rental material if you have other better options, like the Incredibles or Finding Neverland.