Go Team!

After revisiting the South Park movie recently, I felt compelled to revisit another creation of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Team America: World Police. It's another solid effort from their scathing satirical minds, though not quite as razor sharp.

As with South Park, there is a message of sorts behind the satire. Instead of taking censorship to the extreme, this movie is about taking patriotism and political correctness to the extreme. Well... sort of. Really, there are only brief moments where Team America reaches for anything that profound. For those most part, it just tries to take "action movie" to the extreme.

It does an excellent job of that. Every cliché of the Bruckheimer-esque summer blockbuster is skewered, from the relentless explosions to the illogical plot twists, the shoehorned-in romance to (of course) the montage. (Montage!) And the movie also stops along the way to poke fun at other things: the musical Rent, Hollywood celebrity activism, Kim Jong Il, and more. Including, not least significantly, the movie itself. Some of the best laughs in it come from gags about the Thunderbirds-style marionette puppetry.

I think I'd say this movie is slightly funnier than the South Park film. But I'd also say South Park was a bit smarter in its satire and construction, and had the better songs to boot. It's a close call in any case; I'd still grade this movie an A-. It too isn't quite high enough to make my top 100 list, but it's a fine evening's entertainment.

P.S. -- "Maatt Daamon!"