Team America: Detonando o Mundo

A guilty pleasure for sure. The humor is brazenly sophomoric, but this film gets away with it. Seeing marionettes performing the outrageous events in this chaos evoked some of the loudest laughs I've enjoyed in quite some time.

Terrorists, led by Korean dictator Kim Jong Il (sounding a lot like Elmer Fudd with a head cold) who has a routine aspiration to take over the world, are up against the Team America World Police. Peace activists from Hollywood also find their way into this film's psychotic universe. The socio-political mockeries are rampant everywhere, and no one is safe from this movie's vigilante response. Characters are impaled, decapitated, shot up, burned up, drowned, blown to bits etc.

The deliberately hokey puppetry work is priceless. Wires are clearly visible, (but cleverly not visible when the focus joke of a scene would be upstaged by their appearance), and the awkward, jerky movements while walking or dancing are integrated well. Puppets seen bouncing around in vehicles, or sitting stiffly in their chairs make the effect obvious too. My personal favorite action scene is the aerial dogfight while the Team America freedom fighters are discussing their soap opera love entanglements while they blast enemy planes in cheesy special effects explosions.

No mention of this film would be complete without acknowledging the brilliant love ballad, "Pearl Harbor Sucks, and I Miss You." This gag was absolute genius (and I couldn't agree with the sentiment more). Some of the other music score was clever too, fitting the general tone and style of the movie's humor.

There's a lot of language and intimate scenes not appropriate for all audiences. There seems to be a trend lately to show somebody puking, too, and the movie has a grossly protracted scene of this which seems like the film makers felt obligated to include it. Some of the in-your-face gross-out humor is overdone, but the movie is still overall a laugh riot.

Recommended for most audiences, if gross-out humor doesn't bother you.

The most realistic view of today's world and puppet sex. There are few movies that truly capture the essence of American in the post 9-11 world. Matt Damon is amazing as Matt Damon.

I went into Team America expecting to see something along the lines of South Park humor, and I wasn't disappointed.

If you can't stand South Park's humor, you won't enjoy this at all. The use of marionettes was an unusual choice, but thanks to the great puppetry and designs, they work very well.

The story is just really there to serve the increasingly twisted humor of Trey and Matt's vision. And it works perfectly. There are at least three scenes which made the audience (and me) in the theater laugh out very loud - that is something that very few comedies in recent times have been able to accomplish.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Team America; but then I really enjoy South Park. A very entertaining (adult) cinematic excursion for the South Park creators, and an impressive display of puppetry skills (for which the sex scenes will be remembered! :)

Our adult son recommended this to my husband. Not me, just him.

We watched together anyway and oh my dear Lord, the humanity...and hilarity!

He was laughing crazy hard, eating popcorn and humming the theme song: America, *heck yeah!

One false move and he would have choked to death. It would have been worth it. Great, great movie.

I'm sure plenty of parochial critics will berate this film for anti-American values during the current "war on terror"....BUT...the great thing about this film is that no one is spared being mocked. This bears the standard of a great film by expressing the ironies innate in every argument in this quasi-political tale; from socialist Michael Moore, fashionably charitable celebrities to the terrorists and the, ahem "world police." This couldn't be more accurately summed up than in one of the funniest ever analogies that is employed in this film; the "Dic*s, P*ssies, and a*s*holes, argument." This film also wonderfully parodies the standard conventions and cliché's of the action film genre to create an entertaining, and gleefully controversial film.