Team America is a very funny
film if you like that sort of thing, and I do. It's got enough bile and
nihilism to keep me going for a while and pushes boundaries in a firm
enough and silly enough way to have the audience in stitches.
But.
It's not a great film and,
of course, it's a political scatter gun attacking the war on terror and
the anti-war celebs with equal enthusiasm. And why shouldn't it? Films
should not be political programmes on celluloid, the most important
thing is that comedies are funny and tragedies have a real depth to
them, not that they conform to our political priorities.
However.
I still found it
disappointing. This film came from the makers of South Park which is
defined by its cynicism and iconoclasm. The South Park film in
particular could only really be seen as an attack on the war drive and
the vacuous nature of public culture. Team America was not like this.
The opening scenes, where,
in order to stop a bomb going off in Paris Team America essentially
obliterate the city firing missiles with careless abandon into the
Eiffel Tower and other historic landmarks, are clearly tearing at the
murderous idiocy of American foreign policy and how non-Americans might
come to hate the US.
It's also very good on
racism. But the main target for its scorn are the anti-war celebrities
organised in the Film Actors Guild (or FAG, yes, FAG) who begin as
caricatures of anti-war actors and become out and out agents for
terrorism. In the case of Michael Moore in the most outrageous (and
regrettably funny) way.
Whether the image of Susan Sarondon
wielding a pair of submachine guns and
blasting away in defence of Kim Jong Ill can be an anti-war image is
debatable at best.
At the end of the day this is a two joke film - and despite the fact
that the jokes are funny, it's not really enough to sustain the whole
thing. Yes its funny, and if you like utterly amoral, nihilistic
catharsis then you'll be more than happy. If you're sensitive to those
poking fun at the left then you're best advised that this one is not for
you.
