Team America: World Police
<div class="IPBDescription">A review from a person lacking humor</div> <!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->A bumbling band of renegade marionette Americans takes on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and Hollywood's uber-liberal, appropriately acronymic Film Actors Guild (gnuk, gnuk). If puppets doing it in the 69 position, hearing more than a few four-letter-words, a Top Gun-esque theme song and celebrities dying violent, graphic deaths is going to bother you, consider yourself forewarned.
Story
The catchy chorus of ''Americaaaa…f*** yeah!'' that bellows over an '80s guitar riff whenever our heroes in Team America take on turbaned terrorists, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and Hollywood lefties, at the same time taking out the world's great landmarks with reckless abandon, brings to mind every lame Jerry Bruckheimer movie soundtrack ever made-and dovetails perfectly with the idea behind this latest lampooning of Washington and Hollywood by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It goes a little like this: A five-member group of operatives working out of Mount Rushmore known as Team America--led by gray-haired, take-no-prisoners Spottswoode (slightly reminiscent of Robert Stack in Airplane!)--has uncovered a massive terrorist plan to destroy the world with WMDs. When one of their team is killed, Spottswoode finds his replacement in Gary, the star of the Broadway show L.E.A.S.E.: The Musical, and figures an actor who knows several languages will make just the right spy to successfully infiltrate the terrorist ring. So while Kim Jong Il is busy pulling the strings of Middle Eastern gun-toters and the Hollywood libs in F.A.G. (led by Alec Baldwin, the guild includes the usual suspects: Sean Penn, Janeane Garofalo, Tim Robbins, et.al.), Team America's busy dealing with high intrigue and inter-group romance.
Direction
Parker and Stone do most of the voices here (which explains why Kim Jong Il sounds an awful lot like South Park's Cartman), and it's everything you'd expect from that show's originators: subversive, hilarious, gleefully non-PC, and vulgar like vulgar you've never seen: When avoiding an NC-17 rating requires editing a puppet sex scene, there's a definite bar being lowered somewhere, and we suspect it's right here. Like little kids playing with toys, the filmmakers revel in their marionettes, joyfully sending them in to battle so they can bounce and flop against each other like drunken ragdolls or kill each other with glee in bloody shootouts. They make no bones about the purposely cheap-looking production that's similar to the '60s British series Thunderbirds; the puppets' strings are obvious and the ferocious ''panthers'' sicced upon two hapless celebs are just black housecats. Whatever your politics, both sides get pretty evenhanded treatment in the macho, jingoistic American Team that polices the world while destroying half of it, versus the inspired ridicule of outspoken, left-wing stars like Michael Moore, shown as a howling, mustard-covered loudmouth whom someone calls a ''giant socialist weasel'' and who blows himself up in a suicide mission to take down the Team. As well, the musical numbers are spot-on: ''I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark in Pearl Harbor/I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school,'' sings Gary about Lisa, another Team America member. Sadly, Team America ultimately falters in the very places you'd expect it to fly. Given this particularly hot election year, with the particularly hot issue of the Iraq war, where are Dubya, John Kerry, **** Chaney, Saddam? The celebrity parodies should be funny, but end up a letdown…maybe it's that their lines aren't all that clever, or the fact that none of the puppets really look or sound like the stars they're supposed to be, but it's highly disappointing that these two typically fearless filmmakers would chicken out from giving both the left and the right a proper skewering. While the sets and production are truly an original work of genius and there are moments of sheer brilliance, these are largely overshadowed by gross-out gags for grossing-out's sake and overdone scenes that simply fall flat (the actors singing ''Everyone has AIDS!'' during the Broadway musical--not so funny. Gary laying in a green, chunky pond of his own vomit--not so funny). And that's the shame about Team America, which had tremendous potential and, after the outrageous irreverence of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, had a lot to live up to--it misses the mark like Michael Bay in Pearl Harbor.
Bottom Line
A movie for giggling, politcally savvy homo-repressed teenage perverts, Team America is far from being as funny as it should be so it gets 2 stars--make it 3 if you sniff glue
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is the review from www.movietickets.com about the newest brilliant comedic masterpiece from the creators of South Park.
This thread is two fold: point out the fact that some reviewers just can't get it, and to provide reviews for this movie that I'll be seeing within the next 7 hours.
Without even seeing this movie, I already understand why this reviewer is frustrated: he wants creators of South Park to become comedians that make a point. In doing so, he misses the brilliance of South Park, and the creator's wonderful thought processes. South Park (and this movie) have no real point. Throughout all 8 seasons of South Park, there is not a single point made. They make a "point", and then trash it.
Which is why I've loved South Park all along. It's entertainment, that makes fun of political and social satire, including itself. Sure, it'd be easy as hell to make fun of all the stereotypical people in an election year, but that isn't the point. I saw the interviews with the guys about the movie; it was inspired during a visit to France, when someone made a remark about America "being the police of the world." The guys decided that it would be great to make a movie about that very thing, involving puppets.
By taking the movie into the context of an election year, you miss the comedy. In fact, I think the reviewer's main problem with the movie is that it doesn't rip into the Bush administration. Duh. That's never been their style. Why would they change now?
I'll post my review of the movie lata.
Story
The catchy chorus of ''Americaaaa…f*** yeah!'' that bellows over an '80s guitar riff whenever our heroes in Team America take on turbaned terrorists, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and Hollywood lefties, at the same time taking out the world's great landmarks with reckless abandon, brings to mind every lame Jerry Bruckheimer movie soundtrack ever made-and dovetails perfectly with the idea behind this latest lampooning of Washington and Hollywood by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It goes a little like this: A five-member group of operatives working out of Mount Rushmore known as Team America--led by gray-haired, take-no-prisoners Spottswoode (slightly reminiscent of Robert Stack in Airplane!)--has uncovered a massive terrorist plan to destroy the world with WMDs. When one of their team is killed, Spottswoode finds his replacement in Gary, the star of the Broadway show L.E.A.S.E.: The Musical, and figures an actor who knows several languages will make just the right spy to successfully infiltrate the terrorist ring. So while Kim Jong Il is busy pulling the strings of Middle Eastern gun-toters and the Hollywood libs in F.A.G. (led by Alec Baldwin, the guild includes the usual suspects: Sean Penn, Janeane Garofalo, Tim Robbins, et.al.), Team America's busy dealing with high intrigue and inter-group romance.
Direction
Parker and Stone do most of the voices here (which explains why Kim Jong Il sounds an awful lot like South Park's Cartman), and it's everything you'd expect from that show's originators: subversive, hilarious, gleefully non-PC, and vulgar like vulgar you've never seen: When avoiding an NC-17 rating requires editing a puppet sex scene, there's a definite bar being lowered somewhere, and we suspect it's right here. Like little kids playing with toys, the filmmakers revel in their marionettes, joyfully sending them in to battle so they can bounce and flop against each other like drunken ragdolls or kill each other with glee in bloody shootouts. They make no bones about the purposely cheap-looking production that's similar to the '60s British series Thunderbirds; the puppets' strings are obvious and the ferocious ''panthers'' sicced upon two hapless celebs are just black housecats. Whatever your politics, both sides get pretty evenhanded treatment in the macho, jingoistic American Team that polices the world while destroying half of it, versus the inspired ridicule of outspoken, left-wing stars like Michael Moore, shown as a howling, mustard-covered loudmouth whom someone calls a ''giant socialist weasel'' and who blows himself up in a suicide mission to take down the Team. As well, the musical numbers are spot-on: ''I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark in Pearl Harbor/I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school,'' sings Gary about Lisa, another Team America member. Sadly, Team America ultimately falters in the very places you'd expect it to fly. Given this particularly hot election year, with the particularly hot issue of the Iraq war, where are Dubya, John Kerry, **** Chaney, Saddam? The celebrity parodies should be funny, but end up a letdown…maybe it's that their lines aren't all that clever, or the fact that none of the puppets really look or sound like the stars they're supposed to be, but it's highly disappointing that these two typically fearless filmmakers would chicken out from giving both the left and the right a proper skewering. While the sets and production are truly an original work of genius and there are moments of sheer brilliance, these are largely overshadowed by gross-out gags for grossing-out's sake and overdone scenes that simply fall flat (the actors singing ''Everyone has AIDS!'' during the Broadway musical--not so funny. Gary laying in a green, chunky pond of his own vomit--not so funny). And that's the shame about Team America, which had tremendous potential and, after the outrageous irreverence of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, had a lot to live up to--it misses the mark like Michael Bay in Pearl Harbor.
Bottom Line
A movie for giggling, politcally savvy homo-repressed teenage perverts, Team America is far from being as funny as it should be so it gets 2 stars--make it 3 if you sniff glue
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is the review from www.movietickets.com about the newest brilliant comedic masterpiece from the creators of South Park.
This thread is two fold: point out the fact that some reviewers just can't get it, and to provide reviews for this movie that I'll be seeing within the next 7 hours.
Without even seeing this movie, I already understand why this reviewer is frustrated: he wants creators of South Park to become comedians that make a point. In doing so, he misses the brilliance of South Park, and the creator's wonderful thought processes. South Park (and this movie) have no real point. Throughout all 8 seasons of South Park, there is not a single point made. They make a "point", and then trash it.
Which is why I've loved South Park all along. It's entertainment, that makes fun of political and social satire, including itself. Sure, it'd be easy as hell to make fun of all the stereotypical people in an election year, but that isn't the point. I saw the interviews with the guys about the movie; it was inspired during a visit to France, when someone made a remark about America "being the police of the world." The guys decided that it would be great to make a movie about that very thing, involving puppets.
By taking the movie into the context of an election year, you miss the comedy. In fact, I think the reviewer's main problem with the movie is that it doesn't rip into the Bush administration. Duh. That's never been their style. Why would they change now?
I'll post my review of the movie lata.
Comments
You're talking about Napoleon Dynamite, right? Of course you are.
And remember folks, respect others opinions!
That's not saying it's going to be bad; it looks hysterical. But it's definitely the Southpark brand of humor. Leave your political correctness at the door. And incidentally, I'd like to dispute the claim that Southpark doesn't teach morals. I would argue that it *does* feature morality in at least some of its episodes. The most frequent kind of "lesson" I've found in Southpark is "ok, <random radical activist group X>, you really need to chill out about <political or social issue Y>. The world isn't as simplistic as you make it."
For instance, take the episode on stem cell research. They depict Christopher Reeves (RIP) as a wheelchair-bound maniac gaining superhuman strength (i.e. becoming Superman, go fig) by sucking the spinal fluid from dead fetuses. It's over the top, it's extremely tongue in cheek, and it's not a little horrifying... but by going so over the top, they're lampooning the radical pro-life groups that mail people pictures of aborted fetuses and blow up abortion clinics.
Southpark does make points. It just has irreverent fun while it does.
Some people on these forums suffer from an interesting disease called "Fake Maturity," in which the victim cannot understand simple, in-your-face humor. It is reminiscent of other social diseases, such as "Pseudo-Intellectualism," in which the victim makes "intelligent" opinions based on what they had been fed from whatever trendy anti-establishment opinion was out that day. However, Fake Maturity is somewhat more annoying than Pseudo-Intellectualism, due to it making the diseased individual seem to carry the personality of a rather large boulder, or a log.
Some people on these forums suffer from an interesting disease called "Fake Maturity," in which the victim cannot understand simple, in-your-face humor. It is reminiscent of other social diseases, such as "Pseudo-Intellectualism," in which the victim makes "intelligent" opinions based on what they had been fed from whatever trendy anti-establishment opinion was out that day. However, Fake Maturity is somewhat more annoying than Pseudo-Intellectualism, due to it making the diseased individual seem to carry the personality of a rather large boulder, or a log. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fake Maturity? I'm the most immature person I know. I thought Kung Pow was hilarious.
But this? It's the same ol' pop-culture "We meddle in affairs" theme with humorous twists.
It's incredibly tempting to label people of a differing opinion 'angsty', 'pseudo-intellectual', or suffering from another similiar affliction, but like most easy ways out, it's also a crutch, and a bad one at that. Some people enjoy South Park's humor, some don't. I'm actually sitting in the middle, enjoying only some of their shows - what does that make me?
I'll by the way check the movie out once (if?) it comes over. It looks fun enough.
And Nem, that makes you part mature/part intellectual/all forum admin. <3
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->But this? It's the same ol' pop-culture "We meddle in affairs" theme with humorous twists. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'll make sure to prove you wrong in a few hours.
The person who wrote that review isn't used to the South Park style and obvoiusly wanted this to be an anti-Bush/ 2004 election thing, when it wasn't it must suck...but hey any idiot can write something that mean you have to listen.
GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!111ONE1
I didn't like the South Park movie either. It seemed a lot like rather than trying to make jokes that were funny (which they did and occassionally continue to do w/ the tv series),the South Park movie just went the lazy route and substituted rampant cursing (because they could get away with it) in complete substitution for anything funny. I just have this feeling that Team America will be the same...
And therein lies the odd genius. The movie was shaped, honed, and perfected to a knife blade to be as offensive as possible. Now I can't bring myself to believe that this is simply because Matt Parker and Trey Stone want to offend people in some juvenile manner so they can go giggle about it. Like I said, it's the meta-humor level that you have to take it at for it to be truly effective. I see it as being so offensive that it actually makes you turn around and question the nature of being offended. It's an Andy Kaufman trick. You suddenly realize that in the end, the joke is on you. That they're laughing at YOU for being offended by all this. And then you can either get angry and leave in a huff, or turn around and laugh at your preconcieved notions. When you watch it in this frame of mind, you may find yourself laughing at all the 'wrong' moments, and yet enjoying yourself much more. It may not work for everyone, but I find everything about the movie to be true comedy genius.
I <3 all comedy that makes fun of both sides. And I also <3 southpark for finding humor in things that really shouldn't be funny <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
OMG DOOM, your next post has to be the most evil, vile, twisted spawn of death and d00m you've ever spouted on these forums. 6666!
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<!--QuoteBegin-DOOManiac's 6666th post+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (DOOManiac's 6666th post)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Hah.
Awesome. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
NOOOOOO! Why Doom Why?
[/edit]
I'd rather see that than Neo and Trinity going at it...
It was freakin hilarious, start to finish. Some parts could have used some more comedy, but were forgotten soon after by the wondrous comedy that followed.
Of course liberal critics spread hate on this movie. All it did was lay the smackdown on everyone.
4/5.