"Team America" is rude, crude and socially unacceptable - just as its playful makers intended.So says Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. We saw Team America last night. The film certainly lays about it, left, right and centre - though I think Peter Bradshaw is right when he says (in the Graun) that '[t]he attacks on the Hollywood whingers outweigh the mickey-taking of all-American machismo'. Bradshaw also writes:
Parker and Stone gleefully pull the pin from their comedy grenade, and the result is an explosion of hilarious bad taste and ambiguous political satire. Everyone is sprayed with shrapnel, from gung-ho patriots to mealy-mouthed pantywaist liberals, and a special kicking is given to Hollywood itself and its bleeding-heart aristocracy: Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and even [inappropriate sentiment deleted - Ed.] the documentary film-maker Michael Moore. The entire acting profession, in fact, is washed away in a river of bile - and the offence given to them is somehow, well, more offensive considering that the creators have used puppets rather than flesh-and-blood thesps.The movie opens with the Team wrecking Paris to foil a group of terrorists, and there and wherever else the action is, it lets you know just how many thousand miles this is east or west of America. There is an impressive soundtrack of satirical songs, including 'America **** Yeah' and 'You're gonna need a montage'; and there's an extended Barry McKenzie-type episode, which certainly roused the (mostly young) audience which WotN and I were part of last night. I'm not recommending it, because you may hate it. But I found it very funny.You know you shouldn't laugh. You know it's wicked and wrong. You shouldn't laugh when Team America's high-minded opponents reveal themselves to be members of the liberal Film Actors Guild or "FAG". Puppets representing Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn mince around reminding everyone in whingeing voices that they have been to Iraq.