Broadway needs Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The creators of South Park and the minds behind films including the South Park feature, Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Cannibal! The Musical and the new Team America: World Police, are not only big fans of musical theatre, but also near-geniuses at writing catchy, clever songs that serve as both satire and genuine tools for advancing their stories. Bigger, Longer & Uncut was a full-blown movie musical, complete with an Oscar-nominated song ("Blame Canada"), and at times you almost wish that Team America was one too, given how deft Parker and Stone are at expressing their ideas and making jokes in song. There's only one point in the film at which a character actually breaks into song, but music plays an integral role in the story and the comedy.
Given that South Park started as animated construction-paper cut-outs, it should come as no surprise that Parker's and Stone's latest big screen effort is enacted entirely by marionettes. Taking their cue from the Gerry Anderson TV shows of the 1960s like Thunderbirds, Parker and Stone have designed a big-budget, Hollywood-style action movie as played by wooden puppets. The team of the title is a Mission: Impossible-like group of agents who jet around the world chasing terrorists, easily identifiable by their turbans and beards. The movie opens with Team America killing a group of terrorists in Paris, destroying the Eiffel Tower and Louvre in the process. Parker and Stone are in full political satire mode, skewering not only the collateral damage in action films, but also the solipsistic attitude of American foreign policy. As each new locale the team jets to is announced on-screen, the title identifies how far it is from the US.
It's not long before we get back to musicals, as Broadway star Gary Johnston, playing the lead in a Rent parody called Lease and singing the climactic song, "Everyone Has AIDS," is recruited by Team America to infiltrate the terrorist network with his awesome acting abilities. It seems the terrorists of the world are uniting in a plot under South Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who sounds suspiciously like the City Wok proprietor on South Park. Team America's right-wing tactics are opposed by a coalition of left-wing celebrities led by a puppet Alec Baldwin and labeled the Film Actors Guild (or FAG, in one of the film's jokes that quickly gets old).
Although Parker and Stone skewer mindless patriotism in the film's first reel (the Team's theme song is the ridiculously upbeat "America: F--k Yeah!"), they soon get around to poking holes in the left as well, especially in self-important celebrities like Baldwin who push their political opinions on the world. All of this commentary is mixed with the duo's trademark vulgarity and the ridiculous visuals of wooden puppets with strings shooting guns, using kung fu, emoting, and yes, having really, really graphic sex (portions of which had to be cut to avoid an NC-17 rating).
One or two of the jokes are recycled from South Park, and the Kim Jong Il caricature has more than a little in common with the Saddam Hussein caricature from Bigger, Longer & Uncut. But there's a lot of very funny stuff, as much of it coming from the absurdity of the puppets in various situations as from the political points Parker and Stone are trying to make. Of course, the songs are wonderful, from the catchy and vulgar theme to a great country parody letting us know that "freedom costs a buck-oh-five," to the song about montages that plays over the montage. Some might take issue with the stereotypes, from Arabs whose only words seem to be "Muhammad" and "jihad" to Kim Jong Il's Mr. Wong diction (he's very "ronery"). But Parker and Stone are sending up the way these stereotypes are used as shorthand in action films and patriotic propaganda, and everything, even the explicit puppet sex, has a satirical message.
The film eventually drags, much like an action movie might, in the segments leading up to the big finale, and it's not as funny or as sharply insightful as Bigger, Longer & Uncut. By the end, Parker and Stone have Gary deliver a monologue advocating a position somewhere in between the film's right- and left-wing stereotypes, and while they might genuinely believe the message, it comes off a little like equivocating. You get the impression that they just aren't quite as passionate about the ideas behind Team America as they were about Bigger, Longer & Uncut's free speech message, and the film might be more an excuse to show puppets swearing, vomiting, screwing and killing.
Then again, what's wrong with that?