Rude, crude and lewd. As nasty as it is naughty. Savagely satirical. Sexually disturbing. And absolutely for adults only.
Most of that is a good thing. Team America: World Police is a puppet animation movie from renegades Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the co-creators of TV's ribald South Park.
No sacred cows go unslaughtered in their work and Team America may be their most extreme effort ever. And not just because they depict two naked puppets having oral, anal and missionary sex in a scene that had jaws dropping and titters sparking throughout the preview audience.
The insane Team America also happens to be shockingly funny, although the conceit of the war-on-terrorism story and the style of animation -- imagine the Thunderbirds on hallucinogenic steroids -- wears thin after the first hour.
Herky-jerky puppets on strings need more than twisted sex and brutal violence to keep them interesting for 100 minutes. So the movie's energy flags before the rousing finale brings us back from the abyss of exhaustion and boredom.
The story, however, is clever and deftly simple: Team America is a group of agents/superheroes holed up in a lair inside Mt. Rushmore. Whenever Muslim terrorists threaten U.S. interests, the Team blasts off to battle the enemy.
But the killer Americans are sloppy. To kill off Osama bin Laden & friends in Paris, they blow up the Eiffel Tower and leave the croissant-shaped cobblestone streets bathed in blood. In Egypt, the collateral damage includes the Sphinx, not to mention dozens of innocent bystanders.
The war reaches its zenith in North Korea, where a lonely and bitter Beloved Leader Kim Jong Il organizes a fake peace conference. Sounding like a cross between Elmer Fudd and Cartman, Kim dupes Alec Baldwin and the Film Actors of America (F.A.G.) into hosting the event. But Kim's true goal is world destruction, catastrophe and chaos.
With its racist stereotypes -- Muslims are shown as ridiculous cartoon characters, while Koreans are gleefully depicted as fascist psychotics -- Team America is a political grenade -- with the pin pulled. Don't expect it to play well, or at all, in Muslim countries or in Korea. This kind of broad satire is offensive and these filmmakers rarely make their own politicial intentions clear. So their movie takes huge risks.
As for the U.S., Parker & Stone -- who do most of the voices as well as the writing and directing -- skewer both the right and the left. President George W. Bush's war on terrorism is made to look clumsy, ineffective and even stupid.
On the left, Michael Moore is a fat suicide bomber while activist actors, including Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and, of course, Alec Baldwin, are made to look like pompous fools. Parker & Stone take delight in debunking the idea that any actors have political currency.
But, if Team America does have a serious message during the current presidential election, it is that a war on terrorism is a lame excuse for the U.S. to play world bully and that there is a reason that Americans are so despised on the world stage, no matter how provoked they are by terrorists.
That is no laughing matter -- except in this gonzo movie.
(This film is rated 18-A)
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