Police brutality never looked so good

Team America: World Police is a big-budget, heavy-gore, nudity-laced action movie. Sort of. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have put their own spin on the action genre, using marionettes to convey their particular brand of crude—and often hilarious—satire. What resulted is a film that has some over-the-top humor and has had a lot of trouble ever reaching the screen.

First, there were the technical difficulties of creating 250 characters and elaborate, small scale sets along with the arduous filmmaking process that required Parker and Stone to be on set 18 hours a day, seven days a week for months on end.

But whatever difficulties were experienced in filming paled in comparison to the struggle with the MPAA to obtain an R rating. Considering their ordeal with South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Parker and Stone are no strangers to controversy. With Team America, however, they were forced to revise a graphic puppet sex scene 10 times before the ratings board deemed it acceptable, receiving approval a mere four days before the film’s sneak preview.

The struggle prompted Parker to publicly announce that he and Stone would bring a class-action law suit against the MPAA on behalf of all independent filmmakers whom they feel are disadvantaged by the ratings system. He also questioned the supposed standards of any organization that objects to the sexual content of Team America but ignores its brutally violent content.

Team America was released Friday with an R rating on 2,539 screens nationwide, giving audiences a chance to see the film behind all the fuss. The story revolves around Gary, a Broadway actor, who is recruited by a group of freedom fighters known as Team America to prevent a massive nuclear arms attack orchestrated by Kim Jong Il. The story itself is primarily a vehicle for Parker and Stone’s scathing satire, which targets everything from Michael Moore to Arab terrorists to country music.

As in South Park, it is the songs that elicit the biggest laughs, whether it is the overenthusiastic and cartoon-like “America, F--- Yeah” that accompanies every mission or the heartfelt love song containing the lyric, “I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor.”

Most of Team America’s jokes, on the other hand, hit their mark almost exactly. Unfortunately, Parker and Stone don’t know where to draw the line. It’s funny the first time Kim Jong Il mispronounces an English word—not the 20th. And while the first few seconds of Gary puking in the street may elicit some groans of humor, the other 45 seconds only make the audience want to vomit with him.

Whatever controversy surrounds Team America, in the end, what’s most important is whether or not the film is funny. For the most part, Parker and Stone succeed in making the audience forget their political correctness and laugh at the inanity of it all.