Team America World Police!
Saw it last night, and all we can say is that it is the best comedy Hollywood has ever made about terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11. Seeing it restores one's faith in America.
The members of Team America are high-tech, foul-mouthed, Keystone Kops, who save the day only because the bad guys are worse. Writers Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Pam Brady stick it to action heros, dictators, terrorists and peace activist actors, along with psychics, women who value their friendships, and America's intelligence community. Those who call the picture right-wing propaganda don't know what they are talking about.
I grew up on Thunderbirds, a 60s-era British ITV serial, which looked sort of like this: marionettes flying jet airplanes to defeat evil villains. Of course, Team America is 100 time better. Maybe 1,000 times better. Maybe even 2,318 times better. What is really incredible in this picture is that the puppets show more emotion than the Holllywood stars the filmmakers parody. They are better actors, I guess.
Team America has another moral, delivered by an old coot in a bar when our hero, Gary Johnson, hits rock bottom. In case you don't get it the first time, it is repeated at the very end, after a recovered Johnson saves the day from a crazed Kim Jong Il, by out-acting Alec Baldwin. Pure genius.
Seeing Team America was particularly satisfying because, like Team America's Gary Johnson, I had to debate Alec Baldwin in the 1990s, while he was spokesman for the National Endowment for the Arts's lobbying efforts (though we never shared a stage, as the puppet Baldwin does with Team America's Johnson at the North Korean Peace Conference). I also interviewed Michael Moore early in his career. So it was very nice to see the makers of Team America got both of them exactly right.
For chutzpah, imagination and their sense of humor, the makers of Team America World Police deserve the Academy Award.
