Team America: World Police

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For other uses, see Team America (disambiguation).
Team America: World Police
Directed by Trey Parker
Produced by Frank C. Agnone II
Scott Aversano
Pam Brady
Anne Garefino
Trey Parker
Michael Polaire
Scott Rudin
Matt Stone
Written by Trey Parker
Matt Stone
Pam Brady
Starring Trey Parker
Matt Stone
Kristen Miller
Masasa Moyo
Daran Norris
Phil Hendrie
Maurice LaMarche
Jeremy Shada
Fred Tatasciore
Music by Harry Gregson-Williams
Cinematography Bill Pope
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date(s) October 15, 2004 (Theatres)
May 17, 2005
(DVD and VHS)
Running time 98 min.
Language English
Budget $30,000,000
IMDb profile

Team America: World Police is a 2004 film by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the Comedy Central show South Park, shot with marionettes. The satire is in the Parker / Stone trademark over-the-top style, and several original songs are reminiscent of the South Park feature film, an earlier project by the same team.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story starts with an attempted terrorist bombing in Paris, which is foiled by Team America; although the team manage to lay ruin to Paris in the fight, destroying a number of landmarks such as the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower (in the movie, all of the major Paris landmarks are located in one small plaza). Sarah destroys the Louvre to foil the terrorists' plan. As Carson, one of the team members, proposes to colleague Lisa, a terrorist — left for dead — rises up and shoots Carson, killing him.

In New York City, Team leader Spottswoode tries to recruit Broadway actor Gary Johnston to join the team. At first, Gary is worried that Spottswoode is a Hollywood movie director who will make Gary perform oral sex on him, but eventually Gary joins Spottswoode in a limo (a comically-stretched version of a Lamborghini Diablo), which "valmorphanizes" into an airplane and takes them to the Team America Headquarters inside Mount Rushmore. Gary is introduced to the other team members: Sarah, an empath who senses the obvious, from San Francisco, California; Chris, the best martial artist from Detroit, Michigan; Joe, an all-American quarterback from the University of Nebraska; the computer I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. (voiced by radio personality Phil Hendrie); and Lisa, to whom Gary is attracted. After some soul-searching in Washington D.C. (with a satire of country music playing the background), Gary is convinced to join.

Gary's first mission involves going undercover in a tavern in Cairo, Egypt, in an attempt to discover the terrorists' plans. The scene inside of the tavern is a parody of the first Star Wars film. Just as he is about to discover the plans, his teammates are spotted, and the terrorists run, taking Gary with them. Team America chases after them, almost killing Gary and destroying various landmarks, including the Sphinx, Abu Simbel, and the Great Pyramid, along the way. During the firefight, the female team members discuss their love lives.

After rescuing Gary, they return to their headquarters and celebrate, convinced that they have foiled the terrorists' plan. In fact, it was a complete fiasco that eliminated a few low-level terrorists, while the primary targets were alerted and unmolested. During the victory celebration, Gary and Lisa are shown alone, and discuss their feelings for each other. Lisa is attracted to Gary but still hurting from the death of Carson, and says she will become involved with Gary only if he promises he will never die. After stating he could never make that promise, she appears unfazed, saying, "If only you could promise that, I could make love to you right now." Gary hastily promises. This leads to an extended hardcore pornographic scene between Gary and Lisa, which was severely edited by Stone and Parker for the theatrical release in order to secure an "R" rating.

Peter Jennings reports that the Film Actors Guild (abbreviated F.A.G.), led by actor Alec Baldwin and other liberal celebrities such as Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Helen Hunt, Janeane Garofalo, Samuel L. Jackson, and Matt Damon, are outraged by Team America's conduct in Egypt. (In a deleted scene shown on the DVD, a news-report states that France and Egypt hate Team America, and will probably kill them when they come again, though this was a parody of the BBC News in Britain, rather than actual American reports.) The real terrorist plan is revealed to be masterminded by Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea. Hans Blix shows up at his palace asking for an inspection and threatens to write him an angry letter, but Kim Jong-il feeds him to his sharks (this scene mimics one from the James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me).

Meanwhile terrorists, angry about what happened in Cairo, bomb the Panama Canal in retribution, killing thousands. The Film Actors Guild, led by Alec Baldwin, blames Team America for the Panama-bombing. Gary, who admires Baldwin, concludes that his acting has once again caused death, and quits Team America, going on to becoming an alcoholic bum (even vomiting comically around six times, all in a lengthy period of time). Team America goes on a mission, but is shot down over the ocean and captured by Kim Jong-il. F.A.G. protests in front of the Team America headquarters, with Tim Robbins saying they should put an end to the team, as they cause more harm than good. Michael Moore commits a suicide bomb attack against the headquarters, and Spottswoode, who was the only one there, is believed to be dead. In the F.A.G ( that includes and 'gay wad' beaton) group, Helen Hunt suggests a new course of action for the guild, while Janeane Garofalo feels they should read the newspaper and repeat it on television like it is their opinion. All Matt Damon can say throughout the film is his own name, in a voice that makes him sound mentally retarded. As the meeting concludes, Baldwin introduces their new leader, who turns out to be Kim Jong-il himself.

Gary decides he must rejoin Team America. Spottswoode survived the attack, and makes Gary perform oral sex on him to prove his loyalty. After that, Spottswoode takes Gary through an intensive one-day crash course (wherein the song "Montage" is played) in combat skills.

Gary goes to North Korea to rescue the rest of the team, fight F.A.G., and foil Kim Jong-il's plan. He succeeds, and Kim Jong-il is pushed off a balcony, which leads to his body being impaled by a German diplomat's World War I-era helmet. A cockroach-like alien, however, escapes from the mouth of Kim Jong-il, much like a similar scene in the movie The Hidden. It is an implication that the dictator's body was merely controlled by the insect. The roach, taunting Team America in Kim's voice, escapes in a small spaceship. The song played at the end of the closing credits, "You Are Worthress, Arec Barrwin," explains roach-Kim's motivation. He is from the planet Gyron, and his species, the Zypods, are at war with the bee-like Barmacks. Earth, after its human population had been eliminated through war, was intended as a new home for the Zypods. Since that mission has failed, roach-Kim anticipates condemnation to the "pit of Cryrock."

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Targets of satire

Portrayal of film maker Michael Moore as seen in Team America: World Police.
Enlarge
Portrayal of film maker Michael Moore as seen in Team America: World Police.

Team America itself satirizes the perceived jingoism that leads American administrations to take unilateral foreign policy action that critics deride as "policing the world." The Film Actors Guild (F.A.G.) satirizes the perceived absolutist Left-ism of Hollywood celebrities. The "Film Actors Guild" is a reference to the Screen Actors Guild, and the acronym of the fictional organization, F.A.G., is an allusion to the word "fag," an often-derogatory term for homosexual men.

There is a scene early on in the movie where Gary (the main puppet character in the movie) is in a play called Lease, singing the song "Everyone has AIDS". This is a satirical play on the musical Rent, wherein several of the characters are suffering from AIDS. Gary himself satires Mark Cohen, the main character of the play, evidenced by the telltale scarf that Gary wears, which is Mark's trademark.

According to Parker and Stone, to avoid being pigeon-holed as simply a movie about the 2004 U.S. election, the film deliberately does not name any American politicians; Kim Jong-il and Hans Blix are the only real political figures directly identified in the film. Team America acts without any guidance from the White House or the Department of Defense. On the other hand, others see Team America's incompetent and needlessly destructive operations as a jab at current American counter-terrorism policies. The titular team's reliance on an actor who is inexperienced in politics, foreign policy, or military operations possibly satirizes incompetence in foreign policy matters, or in the government in general. Political and social commentator Andrew Sullivan considers the film brilliant in its skewering of both the left and right's approach on terrorism. Sullivan (a fan of Stone and Parker's other work, as well) coined the term "South Park Republican" to describe himself and other like-minded fiscal conservatives/social libertarians. Parker is a registered Libertarian.

Many Hollywood actors are directly satirised, by name. Sean Penn is portrayed making an outlandish claim about Iraq, which might be a reference to the portrayal of happy, kite-flying Iraqi children in Fahrenheit 9/11. ("Before Team America showed up, it was a happy place. They had flowery meadows, and rainbow skies and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles.") Janeane Garofalo's character states, "Our job as actors is to read the newspapers, and repeat what we've read on TV, like it is our own opinion." In the film, Alec Baldwin is portrayed as the leader of F.A.G. and proclaimed on two different occasions to be "the greatest actor ever." According to Parker and Stone, Penn sent an angry letter inviting them to tour Iraq with him and ended it with the words, "Fuck you." Matt Damon was also parodied to be mentally handicapped, only saying his name throughout the movie, much similar to Timmy in South Park[1].

Filmmaker Michael Moore is depicted as a suicide bomber. Stone explained the reason for this portrayal in an MSNBC interview:

"We have a very specific beef with Michael Moore...I did an interview, and he didn't mischaracterize me for anything I said in Bowling for Columbine. But what he did do was put this cartoon [titled A Brief History of the United States of America([2]), written by Moore, animated and directed by Harold Moss and the Idealabs studio] right after me that made it look like we did that cartoon."[3]

Bowling for Columbine includes a brief interview with South Park co-creator Matt Stone, who suggests that South Park was largely inspired by Stone's childhood experiences in Littleton, Colorado. Stone presents a vision of Littleton as painfully normal, and highly intolerant of non-conformist behavior. In a segment that immediately followed the interview in the first release, an uncredited cartoon in a style strongly reminiscent of South Park is featured, depicting the National Rifle Association and Ku Klux Klan as interchangeable evil organizations. However, this sequence was not the work of Matt Stone, nor that of Trey Parker. It became a point of contention between the two and Moore, as they believed Moore meant to imply they had contributed to his film beyond the interview.[3] The animation was in fact made by FlickerLab. Subsequent releases attempted to counter this assumption by delaying the animation until ten minutes later in the film. Parker later claimed on The Charlie Rose Show that he does own a gun and has the opposite opinion of the animation in Moore's film.

The film also parodies movies relying on ethnocentrism in their US American audience. When a new location is shown, the caption will give the place's name and its distance from the United States in miles (in reality measured from New York City). All landmarks in Paris and Cairo are closely located. Also, other languages are simplified to the point of ridicule. French is reduced to stock phrases such as "sacre bleu", the only Spanish line is "no me gusta," repeated several times, and Arabic is given as a guttural combination of the words "derka", "jihad", "sherpa", "bakala", "Mohammed," and "Allah." The Korean language was also simplified for the movie. While no real Korean words were actually used in speech, the real verb endings of "~~ㅂ니까 (~~mnikka)?" (sentence ending in a question) and "~~ㅂ니다 (~~mnida)" (sentence ending in a statement) were used after nonsensical words to give the dialogue a Korean-like sound. A few lines do sound like authentic Korean: when the guards see Gary, one says something like "nuga iya, saekki," or "who are you, fucker?" The movie's soundtrack features a song entitled North Korean Melody, consisting of mostly gibberish words on top of a stereotypically Asian melody;[4] the only recognizable words in the song were "Kim Jong-il," presumably referring to the cult of personality surrounding the ruler. Despite not using real Korean words in speech, real and sensical Korean written characters are used in all Korean writing in the movie. The stereotypical Asian pronunciation of English "R"s instead of "L"s is used heavily by Kim Jong-il. For example, he greets people with "Herro," and calls Hans Blix "Hans Brix," even singing a song in the movie entitled "I'm So Ronery." When Koreans write their names or introduce themselves, they always use their family name first: Kim (family name) Jong-il (given name). Western culture is the opposite. So, when Hans Blix meets Kim Jong-il in Kim Jong-il's palace, Blix addresses Mr. Kim as "Mr. Il." This could be a reference to Harry Truman's infamous faux pas when greeting of Chiang Kai-shek (the president said, "Mr. Shek").

In some scenes, particularly in the Panama Canal scene, hemp plants are placed around the scenery, made to look like ferns due to their relative size. Also, some plant leaves were made up of shredded dollar bills.

Despite the teaser trailer's boast that George W. Bush and John Kerry (along with a whole slew of celebrities) are "going to be really, really mad when they see Team America: World Police," neither Bush nor Kerry are actually seen or mentioned, although marionettes that look similar to them (and their wives) can be seen in the audience of LEASE, a parody of Rent.

[edit] Filmmakers' response to critical reaction

In an interview with Matt Stone following the film's release,[5] Anwar Brett of the BBC asked the same question that many film critics had wondered aloud in their reviews of Team America: World Police — "For all the targets you choose to take pot-shots at, George Bush isn't one of them. How come?" Matt Stone replied, "If you want to see Bush-bashing in America you only have to walk about 10 feet to find it. Trey and I are always attracted to what other people aren't doing. Frankly that wasn't the movie we wanted to make."

Kim Jong-Il, a noted film buff[6], has never commented about his depiction in Team America.

[edit] Box office performance

Team America made $12.1 million in its opening U.S. weekend; since then the film has made a profit internationally, but domestically only just made back its production costs ($30 million) after over two months in release. [7] Worldwide it made over $50.8 million at the box office. [8]

[edit] Individuals parodied

Famous people depicted as puppets in the film are: Michael Moore, Peter Jennings, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Helen Hunt, George Clooney, Liv Tyler, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, Matt Damon, Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Glover, Ethan Hawke, Kim Jong-il and Hans Blix. With the exception of Jennings, all are killed in dramatic and extremely violent ways (i.e. Moore suicide-bombing Team America's Mount Rushmore headquarters and Samuel L. Jackson getting his head split open by a kung-fu kick). None of the real-life actors lent their voices, although Alec Baldwin expressed an interest in doing so. Both Clooney and Damon are friends with Stone and Parker, and according to reports have stated that they would have been insulted had they not been included in the movie.[9] Also, Damon was meant to be an intelligent person in the movie, but when Stone and Parker saw that his puppet looked like a retarded person, they decided to have him as such being only able to say his name.

[edit] Trivia

  • The unrated version of this film features a 27-second sex scene, which depicts Gary and Lisa in many sexual positions without any sort of censoring or blurring (though the dolls are not anatomically correct.) In some non-American versions of the film this scene was included.
  • The song "Montage" originally appeared in the South Park episode "Asspen."
  • The Paramount Pictures logo sequence at the start of the film is played in reverse, leading up to the first scene in space.
  • The death of Kim Jong Il is very similar to the way in which Saddam Hussein dies in the South Park movie, with both being impaled after a great fall.
  • When Gary is in the limousine with Spottswoode for the first time, Spottswoode asks Gary if he has ever seen a man eat his own head. This is a reference to the South Park episode "Super Best Friends," in which David Blaine performs this trick.
  • The Michael Moore puppet that was blown up was stuffed full of ham.

[edit] Music

Marc Shaiman was originally hired to compose both the original score and the film's songs. He left the film after composing the songs to be replaced by Harry Gregson-Williams. In a curious twist, Shaiman later conducted the orchestra in the film's scoring sessions. The films songs include:

  • America, Fuck Yeah: There is a happy tone and depressed tone in the movie.
  • Freedom Isn't Free: Played when Gary (Trey Parker) decides to take a "detour" with Baxter, the limo driver. The song concludes with the declaration that freedom in fact costs $1.05.
  • Only a Woman: Played during the love scene between Gary and Lisa.
  • I'm So Ronery: Sung by Kim Jong-Il (Trey Parker) when he feels everyone is incompetent.
  • Montage: Sung when Gary (Trey Parker) is training with Spotswoode (Daran Norris)
  • Ching Chong Ido: Gibberish song used to distract the group of people in Kim Jong-Il's large mansion before Alec Baldwin's speech.
  • The End of an Act: Played after Gary quits Team America and gets drunk. It's a love song featuring the refrain "Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you."

There is also a bonus song sung by Kim Jong Il During the credits of the film. The song provides some explanation of the film's ending sequence.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.drudgereport.com/penn.htm
  2. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSCLq3KJeQs
  3. ^ a b http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6228221/
  4. ^ http://www.moviemusicuk.us/teamamericacd.htm
  5. ^ Interview with Matt Stone. BBC.
  6. ^ "North Korean leader loves Hennessey, Bond movies", CNN, Jan. 8, 2003
  7. ^ TEAM AMERICA:WORLD POLICE gross.
  8. ^ Gross on IMDB.com. IMDB.
  9. ^ CLOONEY SUPPORTS TEAM AMERICA DUO (2006-01-31). “...the Hollywood big-hitters all insist they would have been offended to be left out of the film.”

[edit] External links

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