Team America: World Police (movie review)

Every scene in this intentionally tasteless R-rated puppet show is a hackneyed movie cliche. It reads like a signal flare going off in the id of some media-drenched middle American: illuminating, lots of crazy-making ideation. I'm reminded of cave scenes in Aliens and Jeepers Creepers -- except the sheer ridiculousness of the puppets keeps us out of the horror genre -- just barely though, as horror often seeks the ridiculous, as in Evil Cult.

I bet Herr Freud would be impressed at the uninhibited gall our collective superego lets loose on the big screen. Who needs psychoanalysis when you've got South Park Studios and Viacom's Paramount for distribution?

The film investigates the rift between Hollywood lefties who bad-mouth America, versus the action figures living inside Mount Rushmore, who maybe get a little too violent and gung ho, but that's just human nature. The problem with the fag lefties is they become pawns of a greater enemy. Rushmore has to blast the Hollywood dupes to pieces in order to save the world (tsk).

I looked at a similar rift back in 1995 in my Tower of Babel essay. I prescribe invention in Language as the cure for what ails us. Almost ten years later, I find this essay essentially on target. Does Team America help heal the rift, or merely expose it? Even just the latter would be valuable, but clearly the "too violent and gung ho" puzzle is as yet unsolved -- I think because of weak economics (violence is a response to feeling weak).