I thought the best thing about "Team America: World Police" was how it parodied inane Hollywood action movies. I especially enjoyed the idiotic hero's journey plot, which involves a Broadway actor joining a commando unit and saving the world from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Along the way, the actor-turned-commando falls in love, leading to an outrageous gratuitous sex sequence.
The commando unit is called Team America, and it is headquartered inside Mount Rushmore. The commandos arrogantly rip around the world, using Rambo-like tactics to combat bad guys from Paris to Cairo to Derka Derkastan to North Korea. But what made all this funny to me was the campy dialogue and the fact that I'm watching clumsy, one-third-life-size marionettes with the strings showing.
I found the musical numbers in "Team America" to be absolutely hilarious. The Broadway actor is shown performing "Everyone Has AIDS" in a stage musical titled "Lease," a send-up of "Rent." Kim Jong Il wistfully sings "I'm So Ronery" to give a Hollywood-like rationale as to why he's a psychopath. The film's upbeat jingoistic anthem is "America, (Expletive) Yeah." And there's the twangy, faux country-western patriotic ballad "Freedom Isn't Free."
In the movie, Parker and Stone viciously attack certain Hollywood actors known for their political activism, mostly in support of liberal causes. Among the targets of ridicule are Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney, Liv Tyler, Helen Hunt, Ethan Hawke, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Jeaneane Garofalo, and Samuel L. Jackson, all of whom are duped into becoming tools of the evil Kim Jong Il. I'm not sure exactly what Parker and Stone are saying here, but perhaps they're cautioning American viewers against formulating ideas about foreign policy based on the positions of Hollywood actors.
A lot of stuff gets blown up in the movie. While Team America is pursuing bad guys, there is collateral damage destroying the Louvre and the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Also, terrorists blow up the Panama Canal, and Michael Moore carries out a suicide attack that leaves Mount Rushmore in ruins. It's possible that Parker and Stone were sending a political message in their film, but if so, I don't really understand it. I'm willing to assume that all the violence and destruction was just their way of spoofing Hollywood action movies.
The "Team America: World Police" DVD comes with a number of bonus materials. There's no audio commentary track, but Parker and Stone give a five-minute intro to their film in "Team America: An Introduction." There are also eight production featurettes with a total running time of about 55 minutes. In addition, the DVD contains 10 deleted/extended scenes and outtakes, but the total running time for these is only about six minutes. Finally, storyboards are provided for six of the movie's sequences.
The DVD bonus materials mostly deal with technical issues such as building sets, creating and operating puppets, making the action sequences look realistic, and so on. I realize that some people are fascinated by this sort of thing, but I found it only mildly interesting.
Paramount Home Video has released three slightly different DVD versions of "Team America: World Police." The version I'm describing here is R-rated and widescreen, and that's the only version about which I have first-hand knowledge.
There's also an unrated widescreen DVD version that my research indicates is about a minute longer than the R-rated version. Apparently the unrated version contains a small amount of material whose raunchiness exceeds the boundaries of the R rating.
In addition to the widescreen R-rated version, there's also a full-screen R-rated version. Presumably the only important difference between these two versions is the feature film's aspect ratio.
Continued on the Next Page: More About the Bonus Materials and Different Versions of This Movie on DVD
