Ebert Review: Team America

Chicago Sun Times ^ | 10/15/2004 | Roger Ebert

[Porterville]

If liberals hate it, it must be one of the best movies ever.

[CaptRon]

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 --

Coming from Ebert this is irony of the highest order.

[dogbowl]

Sometimes when the film is not liberal enough, he hates it even more, like "The Life of David Gale" (no stars):

The movie is set in Texas, which in a good year all by itself carries out half the executions in America. Death Row in Texas is like the Roach Motel: Roach checks in, doesn't check out. When George W. Bush was Texas governor, he claimed to carefully consider each and every execution, although a study of his office calendar shows he budgeted 15 minutes per condemned man (we cannot guess how many of these minutes were devoted to pouring himself a cup of coffee before settling down to the job). Still, when you're killing someone every other week and there's an average of 400 more waiting their turn, you have to move right along... While Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in Texas.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030221/REVIEWS/302210304/1023

[mykroar]

I thought we were calling it the "Bro." LOL.

If Ebert hates it - it's a definately "must-see."

[isthisnickcool]

I just saw the movie. It's hilarious. It's a movie I'd see again.

[Bacon Man]

If Ebert hates it, it has to be good!

[AmishDude]

You can't trust Ebert with any political movie. Actually, you get a very good idea of what the movie is about if you read the whole review and ignore the star nonsense.

[rwfromkansas]

Ebert is trying to make this into a movie that bashes both sides, but it is not.

The ONLY element of anti-conservatism perhaps is that we blow everything up element. Ebert's attempt at making the crude disguises a political statement is ridiculous. And even the we blow everything up element is not much of a statement since I have heard the movie concludes with the message that although not perfect, somebody needs to step up.

"No real point is made about the actors' activism; they exist in the movie essentially to be ridiculed for existing at all, I guess."

I guess Ebert has not read the interviews with Trey and Matt. Yes, you fat idiot, it very much is an attack on them pesonally.

[sharkhawk]

I thought the Dems were too far to the right for him

I read his review of the motorcycle diaries, and he had what might have been the most hilarious or sad lines I have ever read. He basically said that Che and Castro were actually right wingers and not communists, because they suppressed free speech and independent thought. I wonder whether Ebert is really that stupid or just such a big shill for the left that he doesn't really understand the evils of Communism.

[rwfromkansas]

BTW, the blow everything element is satire of Hollywood action movies, not a political statement really, according to Trey and Matt.

Thus, when you actually read their words....though they say nobody should vote based on this movie....it largely is a conservative film since the one element liberals are pointing to and saying "yay!" at, the blowing everything up element, really is not a political statement at all.

[HHFi]

Hmm...apparently, these times aren't serious enough to make Ebert concerned that Michael Moore is harming the nation by polluting people's minds with two hours' worth of easily discredited lies and crackpot conspiracy theories about their commander-in-chief during wartime.

Ebert has always let his squishy political/social beliefs shade his movie reviews, particularly of comedies. The last time I was naive enough to listen to him was way back when "Down and Out In Beverly Hills" came out. He and Siskel lauded it as "the most hilarious satire of the past 10 years." So I threw away five bucks and two hours of my life on a lame, poorly-written piece of nothing that made me laugh exactly one time (at a throw-away gag that was probably ad-libbed on the set). It was so berefit of comic imagination, it actually ended with people jumping into a swimming pool with tuxes on, just to put something in front of the camera lens that approximated comic action of some sort, even if it had already been done to death by Mack Sennett by 1915. But it was anti-rich and pro-homeless, so it had to be brilliant.

I've never seen a movie on Ebert's recommendation since. This only makes me more excited about seeing "Team America," if such a thing is possible.

[Ichneumon]

"PREPOSTEROUSLY juvenile but fiendishly clever"

The words I live by...

[Moonman62]

I read his review of the motorcycle diaries, and he had what might have been the most hilarious or sad lines I have ever read. He basically said that Che and Castro were actually right wingers and not communists, because they suppressed free speech and independent thought.

In a way he's right as well as being wrong. Oppression isn't a liberal trait, but that's where Communists and the Left are, and the Democratic Party for all intents and purposes is there, too.

[valkyrieanne]

Roger Ebert = Michael Moore with a shave.

[Taffini]

ebert interviewed clinton once and did everything but ask him for a date

[LayoutGuru2]

One star from Ebert? Definitely a 'must-see' for me!

[Wormwood]

Ebert, like most liberals, has utterly no sense of humor when it's his side being ridiculed.

We've endured thirty years of shots like Frank Burns, Archie Bunker, and "That's My Bush".

Turnabout is fair play.

[LayoutGuru2]

"That's My Bush" was a Parker/Stone creation. I actually watched a few episodes out of curiosity. Hard to believe the lefties let this show get canned after only eight episodes.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268077/

[cspackler]

I saw it today. If you thought the South Park movie was over the top, you ain't seen nothin'. I laughed a lot, and winced a lot too. The speech at the end is really crude, but oh so true if you let it sink in.

[SShultz460]

This movie Rocks. My YR Chapter went to it tonight and we were DYING!!!

The others in the audience didn't know what they had bought into, and it was heard as we were laughing "That's Not funny!" on several occasions