By Antony Teofilo
October 14, 2004
Weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist plots. Totalitarian dictatorships.
No one is safe.
From Matt Stone and Trey Parker, that is.
The creators of South Park are at their lampooning best with their new feature TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE.
And unlike many current works of parody and satire, TAWP takes aim at both the right and the left. Parker and Stone go after the new ‘culture of terror’ that has swept the nation post-9/11, from ultra-nationalist redneck country anthems to Michael Moore.
Instead of the purposefully crummy animation that brought SOUTH PARK to life, marionettes take center stage this time around, in a style very similar to THUNDERBIRDS, a sci-fi puppet TV show that was popular in the mid-1960s (also recently seen in commercials for the Orbitz web travel service). The puppets often surprise in their ability to be expressive, their faces showing genuine concern, confusion, or anger that adds to the comic effect of certain scenes. Also included intentionally in the film are puppet ‘miscues’ that look worthy of a blooper reel, in which the characters are stymied by their own puppet anatomies, and the strings that power them, as they try to communicate with each other.
For the casual viewer, TAWP will undoubtedly (and intentionally) cause controversy with its gross-out humor and explicit puppet sexual situations. A “love making” scene between two main characters has to be seen to be believed for its Barbie/Ken androgynous hilarity. The scene had to be cut from several minutes down to about a minute to stay away from an NC-17 rating.
Besides all the naughtiness, many celebs that have spoken up against current government policies take it in the tushy, called out by name as idiots for their stance (Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, and Martin Sheen get it pretty bad, Susan Sarandon gets smacked squarely below the belt). But it’s not just the liberals. The Team themselves obviously exist as a rebuke against a war-mongering American foreign policy that is portrayed as smashing and bashing its way across the landscape of the world with no regard for civilian casualties or economic damage.
Evidently, the boys from South Park are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Or at least they’re trying to raise their voices and help us laugh at what is quickly becoming a global crisis. The caricatures and ridiculous situations presented in the film aren’t but a few scant degrees away from our new American reality, and perhaps that, even more so than the potentiality of another terrorist attack, is the most frightening thing of all.
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE explodes in theaters October 15th, 2004.
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
