Rog was not amused. Took too many of his sacred cows to the slaughterhouse.
Ebert Review: Team America
Chicago Sun Times ^ | 10/15/2004 | Roger Ebert
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1245726/posts
1 Star
“What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”
“Whaddya got?” )
-Marlon Brando in “The Wild One” If this dialogue is not inscribed over the doors of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it should be. Their “Team America: World Police” is an equal opportunity offender, and waves of unease will flow over first one segment of their audience, and then another. Like a cocky teenager who’s had a couple of drinks before the party, they don’t have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible...
...Opposing Team America is the Film Actors’ Guild, or FAG, ho, ho, with puppets representing Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Matt Damon, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn (who has written an angry letter about the movie to Parker and Stone). No real point is made about the actors’ activism; they exist in the movie essentially to be ridiculed for existing at all, I guess. Hans Blix, the U.N. chief weapons inspector, also turns up, and has a fruitless encounter with the North Korean dictator. Some of the scenes are set to music, including such tunes as “Pearl Harbor Sucked and I Miss You” and “America — F***, Yeah!”
If I were asked to extract a political position from the movie, I’d be baffled. It is neither for nor against the war on terrorism, just dedicated to ridiculing those who wage it and those who oppose it. The White House gets a free pass, since the movie seems to think Team America makes its own policies without political direction.
I wasn’t offended by the movie’s content so much as by its nihilism. At a time when the world is in crisis and the country faces an important election, the response of Parker, Stone and company is to sneer at both sides — indeed, at anyone who takes the current world situation seriously. They may be right that some of us are puppets, but they’re wrong that all of us are fools, and dead wrong that it doesn’t matter.
F yeah!
It was an amazing movie. I wasn’t thinking in terms of offensiveness at all, just amazement. I mean, “America, F*** yeah!” ... I’ll go with that!
I will say the most amazing part was the BJ sequence. I don’t think I’ll ever figure that one out. You know, with puppets ... amazing.
Ebert was a tool no matter how you sliced it.