After having Independence Day fun with Flight of the Navigator last week, I thought it would be appropriate to do an edgier ‘Merica flick this time.
I’ve always loved Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who are clearly not afraid of crossing any lines. It’s funny; when I first saw Team America, it went too far, according to my feeble young mind. Thankfully, tastes can change.
The South Park creators tend to be visionary, and looking back at the now decades long war-on-terror, the humor has aged well. The best way to criticize absurdity may be to describe it well.
One of my favorite things in Team America: World Police was watching the special features. There was a challenge presented, because the marionette operators would actually pre-plan mouth movements down to the syllable. However, Matt and Trey are used to more improvisation, and less structure. (The compromise was to dumb down the puppetry, which added to the cheese.) They have a writing method that struck me as brilliant: they purposely write bad dialogue, which they make fun of – while performing it. So the bad action movie lines are mockery fuel, and make you feel like you’re watching a B movie with your friends.
Feel free to stop in this Saturday night, for Team America: World Police. Here’s the live show link, and be sure to set up notifications, if you want to be alerted when the stream goes live!
