Wow! I didn't think that was possible!
Tura Santana lives!
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.
Siskel had children. But I think Ebert doesn't. His wife is black. They make an interesting, albeit liberal couple.
He's the first, and I think only movie reviewer to receive the Pulitzer for criticism. And he suffered recently from thyroid cancer.
None of this changes the fact he raised up his pudgy thumb for FH911.
Puke.
I assume this is him (from opensecrets.org)
EBERT, R J CHICAGO,IL 60614
THE EBERT CO. LTD./WRITER
3/4/2004
$1,000
Kerry, John
Is that including his own?..... He needs a manzier, baby!!!
They may be right that some of us are puppets, but they're wrong that all of us are fools,
Speak for yourself Ebert.
Well, Ebert is out-of-touch; can't spell "hip"; can't take a joke and is irrelevant.
This is the Dems big problem. They can't laugh at themselves.
If Ebert hates it it's a must-see for me.
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
Yup. a lot of hollywood types are puppets, as are you.
They are not wrong that all of you are fools.
And it does matter, because for the first time this year, someone is not making a "HATE BUSH" "HATE AMERICA" movie...but one that satirizes Hollywood idols...
I'm organizing a group to see it after work on Monday
Actually Ebert has always been among the more populist of serious film critics. Praising popcorn films others sneer at. And despite what's been said here his best work is outstanding. Though he hasn't been at his best in about 10 years.
Believe it or not, there are some homosexuals who like women from the waist up.
I agree with you. This does not stop me from noting that Ebert, as well as his sidekick Roeper, is as open about his politics as Medved is about his.
I never debend on Ebert's reviews. Once in a while he has been right. But I've seen too many truly boring films (nonpolitical) to which he had given rave reviews. IMHO he is getting kickbacks for his reviews and he has an agenda.
Trey and Matt actually had an episode that they titled "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods". Better known as the "plane-arium" episode.
In the episode the head of the planetarium gave the following line:
"Now stars are actually made of hot gas, which is exactly what comes out of Roger Ebert's a$$."
Perhaps that explains why Ebert only gave Team America one star.
Let's make this movie a HUGE hit. Bigger than F9/11. Tell everyone to go see it! For no other reason, than to totally piss off Sean Penn. I keep thinking of that "memo" he wrot and it cracks me up to this day!
PREPOSTEROUSLY juvenile but fiendishly clever, the latest offering from Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the lunatic creators of "South Park," tickles a whole new set of funny bones.
Their consistently hilarious, relentlessly potty-mouthed "Team America: World Police," about a team of gung-ho American commandos fighting to stop North Korean leader Kim Jong Il from selling WMDs to terrorists, aims its satirical big guns and fires at will...
So, who's going to hate this film? Michael Moore, who is portrayed as a suicide bomber with a hot dog in each hand and a mustard-smeared mug. Half of liberal Hollywood, whose puppet images are variously impaled, torched, decapitated or shot.
Fans of country music. Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, whose "Pearl Harbor" is mercilessly lampooned. Patriots. Those offended by four-letter words and scatological humor.
Who's going to love it? Anyone with a sense of humor: "Team America: World Police" is hands-down the funniest movie of the year.
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