Film Reviews

Team America: World Police

• Rating:
• Director: Trey Parker.
• Starring: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa, Daran Norris, Phil Hendrie, Maurice LaMarche.
• Details: US/ 98 mins/ (16).

Since Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the co-creators of Southpark, it's hardly a shock to note that their latest feature, Team America: World Police, isn't likely to appeal to those who like their satire to be subtle and understated. Instead of bad animation, in Team America: World Police, we get puppets cut from a similar cloth to those of Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds. The broad, pastiche-heavy, un-PC plot details the efforts of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, to arm the world's terrorists and unleash their destruction on the western world. On the other side of the ideological divide is Team America, a supposedly elite squad of ant-terrorist experts who spend their days fighting anything that threatens the good old US of A. Extremely hit and miss, Team America: World Police may delight in sending up scenes from any number of blockbusters over the past few years, but it reserves the real ire for the liberal views of a select bunch of Hollywood stars (Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, Susan Sarandon) and pours scorn on their egalitarian agendas. Trite? Most certainly. But it's refreshing to see some of those in Hollywood power circles cut down to size and even if Stone and Parker are unnecessarily facile on occasion, Team America: World Police has its moments. Now, if they could just lay off the really low rent humour, Stone and Parker might really have something.

Review by Garreth Murphy