America! You Know the Rest

Released in 2004, Team America: World Police was the big-budget follow-up to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s hugely successful South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. That film, produced two years into the run of South Park, made $83.1 Mil on a $21 Mil budget, ended up getting nominated for “Best Original Song” at the Oscars that year, and is generally considered to be one of the best South Park stories the show ever produced. It cemented South Park as a cultural phenomenon that, clearly, wasn’t going away.

The same could not be said for Team America: World Police. Credit where it’s due, Parker and Stone had already done a South Park movie and clearly didn’t want to just do the same thing all over again (especially as they continued to crank out episodes of the show season after season). They still wanted to be able to tackle the same kind of political issues, with their same style of humor, as they did on their TV show, but this time they wanted to do things a little differently. Instead of another animated movie done in their classic, paper cut-out style, Parker and Stone went bigger, bolder, and weirder. They went with marionettes.

The goal was to do a send-up of the whole action genre. As Parker and Stone noted while filming, having marionettes do jokes isn’t funny, but having them do actions, and reactions, and act as if everything is deadly serious is absolutely funny. To put these puppets into overly elaborate, overblow action sequences, it adds to the humor of the situation. A film lampooning America’s role in global politics is made funnier when it’s dead-pan puppets saying the lines and, yes, committing violent atrocities. The use of puppets heightens the humor and makes the message easier to accept and enjoy.

In the film we’re introduced to Team America, the World Police: psychologist Lisa (Kristen Miller), empath Sarah (Masasa Mayo), Joe the jock (Trey Parker), martial arts expert Chris (Matt Stone), and leader Carson (Parker again). During a terrorist attack on Paris, Team America shows up and kills the hell out of the perpetrators, but also, in the process, destroy blocks and blocks of priceless Parisian landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, the Arc du Triomphe, and the Louvre. And then, before they can truly celebrate, Carson is killed, leaving his fiance, Lisa, devastated.

With a gap in the team, and a looming terrorist threat led by Kim Jong Il (once again Parker), team overseer Spottswoode (Daran Norris) taps Broadway actor Gary Johnson (yes, again Parker) to join the team. To infiltrate the terrorists they need someone that can look like a terrorist. They need an actor! Initially hesitant, Gary comes along, quickly gaining the trust of the terrorists and learning their plan. After killing the cell, the team thinks they’ve managed to stop the looming threat, but Kim has more planned and if the world is ever going to be safe, Team America is going to have to put aside any squabbles within their unit and take Kim down once and for all.

When it was released, Team America: World Police was generally well received by audiences and critics. I managed to bring in $51 Mil against its $32 Mil budget, qualifying it as a “modest” success. Technically it would be a bomb now if it made that kind of money, but back when cable licensing and DVD sales made up a much bigger portion of a movie’s revenue, a performance like this at the theater wasn’t made. It wasn’t the smash success of the South Park movie, but it was good enough for Parker and Stone to call it “good”.

With that said, this film is deeply flawed. The idea of marionettes performing elaborate action stunts is hilarious, and the film is able to get a good bit of goofy fun any time it has the puppets doing things puppets generally don’t do. In that way I’d liken it to the Muppets, which also were able to get humor (and awe) out of seeing the puppets do things audiences never could have dreamed of. But instead of the inspiring and amusing stories the Muppets would be in, Team America: World Police goes hard on action, blood, and sex to really see the contrast between our expectations for puppets and what’s on screen.

Outside those moments, though, this film really struggles to be funny. I think Parker and Stone relied too heavily on the idea that puppets being action stars was inherently funny without adding in enough other humor to really make the material work. A big issue is the fact that all the puppets act so self-serious, all of them having the same reactions, the same placid idea of what their mission is, that all the characters on the Team end up feeling the same. There really aren’t lead characters here, just a bunch of wooden dolls (oh the irony there).

The same can be said for the villains, too. Kim Jong Il is the lead villain, but he’s little more than a caricature in this film. He’s a tiny puppet man who yells at everyone. Oh, and he has the racist Asian lisp (flipping his Rs and Ls). That’s the whole of his character, so he never really feels like a real threat. The rest of his ranks are filled in by, of all things, actors (like Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, and others, all voiced by Parker and Stone). I’m sure this is meant as a commentary on how actors insert themselves into politics and, in the view of Parker and Stone, this is a place they don’t belong but… that’s a message that just doesn’t work in this film.

Bear in mind, Parker and Stone are not the arbiters of political correctness. They certainly act like it at times, shitting on everything from what, at this point, feels like a gilded Libertarian throne. The message here is that, because the actors were duped into working for Kim Jong Il, and they’re clearly morons, actors should stick to the entertainment industry and not comment on politics. That’s rich, though, coming from Parker and Stone, two guys using this silly puppet film they made to comment on politics. Pot and kettle have a lot to say to each other.

On top of that, Parker and Stone did a terrible job of selling their other message: America is a bunch of dicks, and we keep inserting ourselves into the affairs of the world, but everyone needs us because without America, the rest of the world is screwed. In interviews that’s what Parker and Stone have said the movie is about but, when you watch it, you can’t help but take the opposite opinion from the film. The characters on Team America are idiots, and they cause more problems than they solve. Blatant disregard for what the rest of the world does is how America operates, yes, but that doesn’t mean they should shut up and take it. If anything, much of what happens in this film wouldn’t have happened if Team America weren’t around, making everything worse. Parker and Stone might think they sold the message of, “just accept America’s help because you need us,” but I don’t think the film sells that at all.

With all that said, there are legitimate laughs to be had in the film. They aren’t frequent, but when they come they are pretty good. A highlight for me is “The End of an Act”, which is a song about how the protagonist misses his girlfriend but, also, how much the Michael Bay movie Pearl Harbor sucks. It’s a strang, incongruous song, but also hilarious. Moments like these show the humor Parker and Stone are actually capable of, and it would have been nice if we could have gotten this kind of storytelling and humor throughout the film.

Team America: World Police isn’t unwatchable. Seeing the puppets doing things you’d never expect is great, and there are some genuinely funny moments scattered through the film. The movie, though, isn’t anywhere near as clever or engaging as South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. It’s a bit of a misfire for the guys, an amusing but lightweight aside for the duo that probably seemed funnier in their heads before they actually made the movie. I watched it when it came out, twenty years ago, and I watched it recently for this review. I doubt I’ll watch it again before another twenty years have passed.