Posted on 10/15/2004 12:48:41 AM PDT by Kornev
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.
Their strategy extends even to their decision to use puppets for all of their characters, a choice that will not be univerally applauded. Their characters, one-third lifesize, are clearly artificial, and yet there's something going on around the mouths and lips that looks halfway real, as if they were inhabited by the big faces with moving mouths from the Conan O'Brien show. There are times when the characters risk falling into the Uncanny Valley, that rift used by robot designers to describe robots that alarm us by looking too humanoid.
The plot seems like a collision at the screenplay factory between several half-baked world-in-crisis movies. Team America, a group not unlike the Thunderbirds, bases its rockets, jets and helicopters inside Mount Rushmore, which is hollow, and race off to battle terrorism wherever it is suspected. In the opening sequence, they swoop down on Paris and fire on caricatures of Middle East desperadoes, missing most of them but managing to destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre.
Regrouping, the team's leader, Spottswoode (voice by Daran Norris) recruits a Broadway actor named Gary to go undercover for them. When first seen, Gary (voice by Parker) is starring in the musical "Lease," and singing "Everyone has AIDS." Ho, ho. Spottswoode tells Gary: "You're an actor with a double major in theater and world languages! Hell, you're the perfect weapon!" There's a big laugh when Gary is told that, if captured, he may want to kill himself and is supplied with a suicide device I will not reveal.
Spottswoode's plan: Terrorists are known to be planning to meet at "a bar in Cairo." The Team America helicopter will land in Cairo, and four uniformed team members will escort Gary, his face crudely altered to look "Middle Eastern," to the bar, where he will go inside and ask whazzup. As a satire on our inability to infiltrate other cultures, this will do, I suppose. It leads to an ill-advised adventure where in the name of fighting terrorism, Team America destroys the Pyramids and the Sphinx. But it turns out the real threat comes from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Il (voice also by Parker), who plans to unleash "9/11 times 2,356." "Why that would mean ..." says Gary. "2,146,316," says Kim Jong Il. No. 1 on his list: Blowing up the Panama Canal.
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.
Wow, must be a good movie. I think Ebert is as ticked off as Sean Penn.
I believe I read somewhere that Ebert gives $$$$ to the Dems.
I can understand why Ebert gave it one star, he's a leftist flake, but I laughed quite a few times just reading the review.
I thought the Dems were too far to the right for him
Well, he obviously has NO sense of humor. This movie is awesome! I loved it!
Ebert gives money to Dems, gave a thumbs-up to "Fahrenheit 911" and another one to "Outfoxed", and is a laughingstock to serious film critics. Plus, he looks like Dixie Lee Ray in drag.
The White House gets a Free pass?
I have never known him to complain about any of his lefties getting a free pass.
I am definitely seeing this movie.
Me too!
Ebert's not 'light in the loafers', unless he's deeply in the closet. He's married (shudder), has kids (ugh) and Russ Meyer once declared that Ebert's boob fetish was worse than Meyer's (and that's a pretty big fetish!)
Ebert is like a piece of rotten fruit:
Soft, rancid and useless.
Ebert's married, but I didn't know he had kids. When?
I don't know when he had kids. I read an interview with him once in which he was talking about his child (or children.) In fact, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if it was Gene Siskel or Roger Ebert. (But the rest of what I wrote...I'm certain of!) And his wife is as fat as he is.
I've got to go this weekend. I saw a quick clip from a trailer that showed Michael Moore (I think) dancing in front of a Pyramid. It was cracking up on that scene alone.
Well, in any event, by trying to ridicule the movie, he's only made it more intriguing.
A must-see, definitely.
So what he's trying to say is the White House/Bush should be bashed in this movie for him to like it?
Considering his reviews over the last few years, I'd say that's pretty much a requirement on anything concerning current events.. Even a wacko comedy like this.
Works for me...
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