Politicize This!
Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "Team America" is a mean-spirited, fall-down funny satire. But it isn't spoofing who you think.
by Jonathan V. Last
Weekly Standard
IT REMAINS TRUE that people beset by an unhealthy thirst for politics tend to see politics everywhere. This monomania was most recently on display with the left's embrace of Roland Emmerich's fine disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow because they thought it was an assault on George W. Bush.
Brace yourself for more silliness. Today Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America: World Police debuts. Sean Penn has already taken to the ramparts, fuming at the movie's depiction of him and lamenting its right-wing message which will "encourage irresponsibility that will ultimately lead to the disembowelment, mutilation, exploitation, and death of innocent people throughout the world." Further out on the left, the Daily Kos is similarly disturbed by Team America: "The apparent goal of the movie was to make it a satirical jab at every facet of the 'war on terror.' Problem is, I think our side got the worst of it."
There will be more. If he hasn't already, expect salvos from Andrew Sullivan lauding Team America's political philosophy--that the world is composed of "dicks," "pussies," and "assholes"--and rhapsodizing about the virtues of South Park Republicans. The gentle souls at Reason should be similarly smitten. Eventually the left will strike back and the two sides of the ideological spectrum will make a little scrum, each trying to claim Team America for their own.
WHY ALL THE FUSS? Team America follows the exploits of a supra-governmental strike force called, fittingly enough, Team America. Like G.I. Joe, they cross the globe foiling terrorist plots, killing bad guys, and making the world safe for Wal-Mart. Unlike G.I. Joe, they curse, drink, and have sex. Also, they're marionettes.
After one member of the team is killed by a terrorist during a shootout in Paris, their leader, Spottswoode, recruits Gary Johnston, a rising Broadway thespian, to the team because they need an actor to infiltrate an Arab terrorist network. It turns out that the terrorists are being manipulated by Kim Jong Il, and as Team America turns its attention to North Korea, they lose support at home when a group of Hollywood stars organizes against them.
The Hollywood crowd, led by Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, and Tim Robbins, thinks that Team America is a fascist, warmongering, blah-blah-blah. Much mayhem follows. In no particular order: Hans Blix is fed to sharks, the city of Cairo is destroyed, Helen Hunt is cut in half with a samurai sword, and certain of the puppets engage in various acts of sexual depredation.
What has Messrs. Penn and Kos so hot is that Hollywood actors are portrayed as self-important, callow, anti-American jerks. (As a side note, Sean Penn's next film is The Assassination of Richard Nixon. He plays a common man who is driven to assassination by the president's political corruption. As the movie's press release explains, "Though set in a divided America of thirty years ago, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, particularly its shattering dénouement, achieves an eerie resonance in our equally conflicted, post-9/11 era.")
The right has not been entirely happy with Team America, either. Weeks ago it was reported that the White House thought the film unhelpful. In it, Americans are portrayed as dumb, crude, and self-centered and American military intervention is shown to be a cure nearly as bad as the disease. Stone and Parker have never been particularly kind to either Republicans or conservatism in their other endeavors, including South Park and the short-lived TV-satire, That's My Bush!
All of which misses the point: The real target of Team America is neither Sean Penn, nor George Bush. It's action-movie director extraordinaire Michael Bay.
WHATEVER ELSE it is, Team America is first and foremost a pitiless indictment of the modern action movie. The characters and dialogue are dead-eye parodies of the roles Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, and Nicholas Cage often clock in for.
Even more devastating is the way Parker and Stone mock action directors such as McG, Dominic Sena, Simon West, Joel Schumacher, Tony Scott, and, more than anyone else, Michael Bay. From its camera angels to its cuts to its daft, by-the-numbers narrative arc, Team America is such a hysterical condemnation of the blockbuster action movie that it's very nearly cruel. There is one sequence, where the little marionette heroes limp lamely toward the camera in a shot stolen from Bay's Armageddon, that is so mean that it actually conjures sympathy for the poor, overpaid chap. (When you remember that Bay stole this shot from Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff, the sympathy magically disappears.)
With Team America, Parker and Stone are saying, Hey, not only can we make an exact knockoff of the junk you spend $120 million dollars on, but we can do it with actors who are literally wooden.
To miss this and get caught up in Team America's politics is like watching Best in Show and trying to figure out which breed of dog Christopher Guest likes most.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT POLITICS. Is it any good? Yes and no. There are moments of gut-busting hilarity in Team America. The puppet for Kim Jong Il, for instance, is unbelievably funny. Trey Parker voices him as a cross between Dr. Evil, Mr. Wong, and Elmer Fudd; he steals every scene he's in. Stone and Parker's trademark gross-out humor is also on display, and it works well most of the time.
It's worth noting that the comic timing in Team America is truly inspired. The directors know how to hold beats, not just so long that they're uncomfortable, but even a little longer than that. The result, as when Gary tries to convince Spottswoode to let him rejoin Team America, is terribly funny. The movie's score is also quite hysterical: All of the cheap, emotional musical cues that bash audiences over the head in action movies are dialed up ten-fold, and played with absolute conviction.
The same cannot be said for the soundtrack. Team America isn't a full-blown musical, like South Park: The Movie, but it has it's share of production numbers. On the whole, they're amusing, but none are overly clever. There's no "La Resistance" number, which you'll find yourself humming days later.
Finally, the movie lacks something in the profanity department. One of the joys of South Park is its genius for cursing: Parker and Stone took profanity to ludicrous heights, inventing cusses so bizarre and vivid that they work as stand-alone jokes. I won't name any of them here, but I have my favorites and other viewers no doubt have theirs. The profanity in Team America is more pedestrian, and, if this makes any sense, less funny.
Which is pretty much the final verdict on Team America. If you like what the South Park boys do, then you'll enjoy yourself. But it isn't the instant classic for which so many fans have been hoping.
Jonathan V. Last is the film critic for The Daily Standard.
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