Team America: World Police film review

certificate_15

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE

For Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, bad taste is something they strive for not try and avoid. They achieve it almost relentlessly in the hilariously depraved Team America: World Police. In a climate of crippling political correctness, Team America is flagrantly insensitive. The only measure of tact they show is being equal opportunity insulters. No-one escapes their ridicule. Gays, actors, political leaders and whole cultures are all fair game. Stupid and puerile it may be, but for those prepared to give themselves over to its absurdity, Team America's mischievous vein is a guilty pleasure.

Parker and Stone took animation to new lows with South Park and the pair has now done the same with the once wholesome art of puppetry. Indeed the explicit scene sex scene had to be cut to prevent the film receiving the commercially dire NC-17 rating. The sight of two naked marionettes working their way through half the positions in the Karma Sutra is but one of the many bizarre scenes in a film which also includes the indelible images of Alec Baldwin getting his head blown off by North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il and Sean Penn being eaten by pussy cats.

Satirizing terrorism using puppets is certainly an original concept, though the film is less concerned with making a political statement than it is mining the topic for laughs. To prevent any claims of jingoism or racism, it's actually Americans who come off looking the worst. Team America is an international police force dedicated to eliminating the global threat of terrorism but, in a manner that echoes not only events but world opinion, they are prone to doing more harm than good. This is exemplified in the opening scene when the might of Team America is sent to Paris to intercept a group of Middle-Eastern terrorists and succeed only in blowing up the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre.