|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Team America prides itself to be the world police, bringing truth,
justice and the American way of life to teh furthest corners of the world,
whether they want it or not (and more often it's not, actually). But after
stopping a terrorist plot in Paris and destroying half of the city in the
process, they are one man short - and hire Broadway actor Gary to fill the
empty spot. Point is, they need an actor to go undercover at a terrorist
hideout in Cairo - and somehow Gary manages to succeed in his mission too,
and with the destruction of Cairo, a stop seems to have been put to the
terrorist threat ... until the terrorists blow up the Panama Canal as
retaliation, which is a big blow for Gary, since as a child, his acting
has caused his brother to be maimed by gorillas, and now he thinks himself
responsible for the latest attack. And when his acting idol Alec Baldwin
mobilizes the Film Actors Guild (FAG) against Team America, that's too
much for him and he quits the team. Team America goes against the
terrorists without Gary, but without an actor on their side, they are
almost powerless and fall into the hands of the terrorists and their
secret leadeer North Korea's Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Il plans to assemble
all world leaders for a peace conference and have Alec Baldwin and all his
liberal actor friends like Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Sean
Penn and so on as key note speakers - while everywhere in the world, Kim
simultaneously launches terrorist attacks. Of course, Gary finds back
onto the right path just in time, returns to the Team America
headquarters, which have in the meantime been almost destroyed by
filmmaker Michael Moore, and goes on a mission to North Korea, freeing his
friends, killing the liberal actors, and finally upstaging Alec Baldwin
with a speech about dicks, pussies and assholes, which finally brings down
Kim Jong Il - also literally. And once more, Team America has made the
world a safer place ...
Pretty much, a parody of the popular
1960's marionation TV-series Thunderbirds
- but for grown-ups, with sex, violence and (mostly blunt) political
satire thrown in. But does that make Team America a good film? Well,
it doesn't make it a bad film, in many ways it pays loving but
tongue-in-cheek hommage to the series it's supposed to spoof, and that's
at least cute, it also very accurately spoofs the action genre as a whole
(even if the line between genre and genre parody becomes at times blurred)
- but its satire very often is a bit too heavy-handed and misses the mark,
which really is a pity because there would have been so much laughs in
actors trying to be the better politicians and the like. Plus, the songs,
while ironically meant, become very annoying before too long. This all
makes Team America neither really good nor really bad, but it's
perhaps a great party film, when a few beers and loud friends prevent one
from following the plot too closely and make one more appreciative for
blunt humour.
|