DVD of Team America:World Police

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	• Team America: World Police [VHS] Trey Parker, Matt Stone Paramount Home Video, 2005 average customer review:based on 524 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

funny as hell

leave it to MATT and TREY to rip virtually everything the united states does and stands for a new one . the soundtrack alone is priceless . ripping off the lame THUNDERBIRDS as a launching point for humor and commentary was inspired . while difficult to watch in a mostly empty movie theater , once at home you're free to laugh with abandon while watching one of the funniest films ever concieved . seeing MOORE blow himself up is worth the price of admission alone . genius . flawless . thanks guys .

What makes Kim Jong Ill?

My kids were just at the wrong age, too young, for me to have gotten into South Park, so "Team America" was kind of a revelation to me. The movie is vulgar, politically incorrect and oh so crude. But it is also a very smart combination of writing, smart puppeteering and topical satire that is just has to be seen to be believed.

Team America is a group of star-spangled fighters who take on terrorists. They tend to be a little quick on the draw, and often cause more damage to those they want to save than the bad guys. The opening scene, in which the team blows the living hell out of Central Paris, sets the stage for the rest of the film.

It's hard sometimes to know with Trey and Stone where satire ends and crude ethnic stereotyping begins. One American character bluffs his way past a couple of Arab guards by repeating variations on "Durka durka." Is this making fun of the America belief that foreign culture and language is so easily adopted? Or that Arabic is barbaric nonsense? Hard to say. Then there is the film's portrayal of many of Hollywood's leftist artists as terror-pandering loons. Alec Baldwin comes in for a particular savaging, but then so do Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garafalo, Matt Damon and many others. Trey and Stone are notoriously evenhanded in targeting left and right, though I have to say that the right gets off rather easy in this film. It's a choice being portrayed as narrow-mindedly militaristic v getting your head blown off.

Anyway, Team America finds its way to North Korea, where lead bad guy, Kim Jong Ill, is the terrorist puppet master who pulls the metaphorical strings of terrorists around the globe. Sometimes I wonder whether the real Kim, already on the downslope of the sanity slide, would see this movie by itself as a pretext to harry the West. Let's hope that never happens. In the film, he is a sadistic crime master with a "ronery" (lonely) heart of gold. His signature song, "I'm so Ronery" bewails his lack of company at the top, while making uncomfortable fun of the East Asian pronunciation. It's this kind of combination hi- and low-brow humor that make the film irresistible and enchanting for nearly every taste..

For a kid like me who grew up in the 60's with shows like "Fireball XL-5" that feature the hop-skip motion of puppets, this film was a great nostalgia trip. Even a 6-year old kid in 1962 watching characters flop into their jet pilot's seats knew he was watching something bizarre and memorable. "Team America" ramps up the inanity of the puppeteering technique, inserting all manner of violence and sexuality that the producers of "Fireball" could never have imagined. Trey and Stone pay tribute to the genre while mercilessly exploiting and expanding it. The film's music adds greatly to the sense of irreverent fun. A love song between two characters ("Pearl Harbor sucked, and I love you") trashes Ben Affleck and takes a swipe at smarmy movie love songs. The film's theme song is not only rude, violent and jingoistic, but has a country flavor that fits right into the "I'm proud to be an American" genre of contemporary popular patriotic music.

Team America is not a film for the gentle or pious. Church folk - stay away! But if you have a certain kind of twisted humor, can stand watching puppets blowing each other away with automatic weapons and explosives, and don't mind watching naked, articulated puppets engage in every graphic sexual situation imaginable, then put this film on your cinematic bucket list.

Should you pick up or watch "Team America"? F-yeah!

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Gorillas And Guerillas

"Team America World Police" is a political satire from Trey Parker and Matt Stone about their perceptions of America's role as the world's policeman. Made with "Thunderbirds" style marionettes, the plot springs from the destruction of much of Paris while pursuing terrorists, where an elite U.S. counter-terrorism group loses a member; the replacement turns out to be an actor with a boatload of emotional baggage. Before long North Korean crackpot Kim Jong-il plots world destruction with the help of the Film Actors Guild, lead by Alec Baldwin. An assortment of leftist actors sympathizes with Kim and believes everything to be America's fault. Satire can be the best indicator of reality; certainly this is one of those times as the film satirizes the arrogance, naïve, and simplistic attitudes so prevalent in the chic Hollywood political activist circuit.

The film is somewhat libertarian in attitude, as it mocks elements from all political factions from Derkaderkastan to Hollywood. By far most of the venom here is directed at the far left Hollywood elite, with special treatment reserved not only for Baldwin, but Michael Moore (who is referred to as a "giant socialist weasel," and who blows up Mount Rushmore), Martin Sheen and Tim Robbins (who are North Korean guards), Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Danny Glover, Peter Jennings, and others. The actors meet fates appropriate for the film, with Glover and Penn being eaten by house cats, for instance.

The United Nations, as impotent in this film as it is in real life, is also rightfully mocked. The U.N. sends the useless Hans Blix to inspect Kim Jong-il's property, and Hans is quickly eaten by Kim's sharks. Kim gets to sing a ballad about loneliness that is the musical highlight of the film, although I loved the battle preparation song complete with the line "we're gonna' need a montage" almost as much.

As you might expect from Parker and Stone, the film is frequently tasteless (e.g. extensive marionette vomiting) and is very politically incorrect. I am by no means a fan of "gross out" humor, and while some of the gags could have been dispensed with, the satirical points made by Parker and Stone are completely legitimate. Unsurprisingly some of the people caricatured in the film were unhappy with the skewering they received. Penn wrote a hostile and profane letter to Parker and Stone as a result, which seemed to prove that he can dish it out but can't take it, although Clooney was more mature and claimed that he would have been insulted had he not been parodied in the movie.

The film is refreshingly independent and did well at the box office (grossing approximately $51 million), which provides hope that more films not beholden to the uber-left Hollywood mentality will be greenlighted in the future. While "Team America" is nowhere near perfect, it does have many funny moments interspersed with the gratuitous grossness, and most importantly of all, effectively skewers its targets, which was the point in making a satire in the first place.

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DVD of Team America:World Police

DVD was in very good condition but had no book with it. Purchase received in a reasonable amount of time.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE, a group of marionette puppets form Team America, an international police force dedicated to maintaining global stability. Discovering that a power hungry dictator, Kim Jong II, plans to destroy the world and is brokering weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, the team enlists the undercover help of Broadway star Gary Johnston and embarks on a harrowing mission to save the world. Opposed to this, is the Film Actors' Guild, or F.A.G., whose members include puppets representing actors Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Matt Damon, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. In spite of the lack of support they receive, the team sticks to their plan of saving the world and putting an end to terrorism.

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