Film reviews
Title: Team America World Police
Director: Trey Parker and Matt Stone
Stars: N/A
Reviewer: Matt Eccles
Rating (out of 10): 4
Review:
A key attribute of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's adult animation South Park was not just that it was a generally funny and fairly well-observed satire, but also its knowing pastiche of the medium itself through the intentional crudity of its animation.
That sense of mischief is replicated in Team America: World Police, basically a satirical Thunderbirds spoof with occasional and deliberate bad puppetry. However, this device fails to stem the swift realisation that the targets of the humour are as obvious as the many laugh-shaped holes in the script.
There are a couple of worthy moments – an inevitable sex scene is satisfyingly over the top – but this film doesn't seem to extract as much mileage as it should out of lampooning such blatant pariahs as America's blithe imperialism and Hollywood's pretentions of social liberalism, empathy and altruism.
What we're left with, then, is not the expected pin-sharp satire to poke in the eyes of the self-proclaimed great and good, but a mostly forgettable collection of adolescent skits and set-pieces that would probably have worked better on the smaller screen.