Team America: World Police (15) Review

Overall Rating

- Hilarious throughout, always going one step further than it needs to whilst remaining utterly unpretentious.

- Will appeal to South Park fans, but the pointless profanity that makes it so enjoyable will not be to everyone's taste.

From the opening shot, Team America World Police is a vastly successful satire, pulling together the various travesties of the modern world's obsession with war and stamping it with the unmistakable and blissfully frivolous brand of South Park humour. What emerges is a film that indicts not only the insanity of the terrorists themselves, but also the madness of peace keeping activists like Michael Moore and various Hollywood elite.

Team America are a vastly stupid organisation that track down terrorists and destroy them. If a great wonder of the world or five happen to get in the way of a stray missile, then so be it, as the protection of freedom is central to the survival of Team America itself, whose inner relationship inequities often stray across into their work, lovers raging at one another whilst terrorist forces attack.

Here, the satire of the Jerry Bruckheimer action blockbuster begins to pervade. The characters of the puppets are all drawn from action movie stereotypes and rarely step outside of these parameters. This forces the audience to engage with what are actually two dimensional characters, reminding us that we often accept far too little in quality from most of the films Hollywood throws at us.

The songs of the film, although mostly sung by Trey Parker, a man whose voice will grate on some viewer's ears, are wonderfully well written, matching the tone of the moment whilst delivering some of the film's best humour. The Michael Bay and Ben Affleck onslaught is particularly irresistible.

The puppetry is self deprecating at times, never taking itself too seriously the way Thunderbirds always used to. Nevertheless, the puppets and set design are a joy to behold, the puppets doing things that we would never have been able to see on a cinema screen without the influence of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Of course, not everyone likes South Park. And Team America will most definitely not tickle their interest if projectile puppet vomiting and acrobatic puppet sex are not what they are likely to be entertained by. The pointless and gratuitous use of profanity is exactly what I expected from the script, and if I hadn't received it, I most likely would have been disappointed, so its presence here makes you feel like you are among old friends, in the familiar and charming atmosphere of South Park.

Team America stomps Fahrenheit 451 into the ground, wisely choosing not to focus on the already boring Bushwhacking that taints most lines of political argument today, and instead focusing its attention on the whole attitude of American foreign policy and its own peoples reactions to it. This film feels as if two childish boys have come up with the concept and two witty, world weary men have inserted the themes. A great film in every way, never smug, somehow managing to juggle comedy and political purpose without one becoming more important than the other. A career peak for Parker and Stone.

Rating: 5/5
By Joshua Morrall

Members' Comments onjayscandal's Review

• ramtin on 7th Sep 2006

  Agreed. Extremely funny.