Team America: World Police, 2004.
Directed by Trey Parker.
Featuring the voice talent of Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa Moyo, Daran Norris, Phil Hendrie, Maurice LaMarche, Chelsea Marguerite, Jeremy Shada, and Fred Tatasciore.
SYNOPSIS:
Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s satire Team America: World Police may not have aged well, but Paramount is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a new 4K Ultra HD edition that ports over the previously available bonus features. You get the movie on 4K and Blu-ray platters, and there’s a code for a digital copy.
My politics tend to lean to the left, but I’ve always appreciated artists who just want to skewer everyone. That appreciation started with Berke Breathed’s Bloom County comic strip in the 1980s, and it continues today with Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s curious creation, Team America: World Police.
I call it a “curious creation” because I would have never expected the guys behind South Park to make a movie with puppets. The obvious inspiration here was the old show Thunderbirds, along with other series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, although Parker and Stone apparently weren’t really fans of so-called “supermarionation.”
Team America: World Police also hasn’t aged very well, since it was created at the height of the George W. Bush presidency, when the horror of 9/11 was still fresh in many people’s minds and the United States had launched its ill-fated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result, younger fans may not understand what all the fuss is about, especially when the movie takes multiple shots at Michael Bay’s insipid movie Pearl Harbor.
The storyline is, of course, pretty simple: Team America is a military organization that defends freedom and democracy around the globe, even if they use a “kill a fly with a flamethrower” approach to the bad guys. The bad guys are the usual Middle Eastern Arab types, along with since-deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.
When a member of Team America is killed during an operation, the decision is made to recruit Broadway actor Gary Johnston to their ranks. The plan is for him to use his acting skills to infiltrate a terrorist cell, but he becomes disillusioned when thousands of people are killed in a terrorist attack that was retaliation for a successful mission. Cue the scene of a down-and-out Gary getting drunk at a bar, only to receive a pep talk from another drunk and deciding to rejoin the team, whose base was recently destroyed.
As you might imagine, Team America: World Police is full of such scenes that use tropes common to these kinds of “rah, rah” movies. There’s even a montage set to a song that describes what kinds of shots a montage uses. It’s funny, but it’s not as over-the-top funny as the similar kind of skewering used in South Park.
Members of Hollywood, along with documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, are also targets in this movie. Alec Baldwin is portrayed as leading the Film Actors Guild, and, yes, that acronym is used often throughout the film as he and other well-known Hollywood liberals criticize Team America for its heavy-handed methods. I found that bit somewhat annoying, since grade school insults aren’t really my thing.
Anyway, if this movie is your thing, I’m sure you’ll want to grab it on 4K Ultra HD. The picture quality is top-notch, and the film is also included on a Blu-ray, along with a batch of archival bonus features. Nothing new was created for this edition, but my understanding is that Team America: World Police was pretty arduous for Parker and Stone, so they may not have been excited about revisiting it.
Here’s what you’ll find in this edition. I don’t have any prior home video editions of this movie, but I believe all of this has been around since the DVD days, since it’s in standard definition.
• Team America: An Introduction (5:10): Stone and Parker take a quick spin through the hard work involved in making a movie like this, but since Parker says he can’t stand actors, it sounds like live-action was never on the table.
• Building the World (12:42): The sets in this movie are a master class in miniature world building, and this featurette takes a tour through them. Obviously, they were not based on specific locations since various landmarks had to be exaggerated so you know, for example, that we’re in France because the Eiffel Tower is so prominent.
• Crafting the Puppets (8:01): The puppets required a lot of work too, so this is a look at that effort with the relevant folks.
• Pulling the Strings (10:09): Since these were marionettes, not Muppets-style puppets, there had to be a lot of coordination during filming to make sure the strings didn’t get tangled, especially when Parker and Stone came up with spur-of-the-moment ideas. And, yes, the sex scene is discussed.
• Capturing the Action (6:44): Cinematographer Bill Pope gets his turn in the spotlight here.
• Miniature Pyrotechnics (4:50): All kinds of stuff gets blown up in this movie, so here’s a look at that aspect of the production. I never watched any of the Andersons’ shows, but I assume they didn’t feature anywhere near this level of destruction.
• Up Close With Kim Jong-Il (5:10): Our main villain gets his own featurette. He’s dead now, of course, but I’m sure his successor would be portrayed in the same way if Team America was made now.
• Puppet Test (4:10) and Dressing Room Test (2:05): Some test footage from early in production, when the crew was figuring out how to make everything come together.
• Deleted/Extended Scenes and Outtakes (6:07): There wasn’t much left on the cutting room floor, so to speak, since a movie like this is planned out in detail ahead of time. Given the complexity of the shots, it’s not like they were going to shoot some extra footage just for fun, but there was some stuff cut that you can check out here.
A few trailers, storyboards, and a code for a digital copy round this one out.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
