Team America *Contains Dialogue Spoilers

[ono]

F.A.G.s!

UGH. There was some guy in the theater who thought it was be funny if he screamed "FAG" everytime that word was on the screen. Of course, he also thought it was funny to scream the entire movie.

Haha, I think we were in the same theatre, ranemaka.  There was a guy like that where I saw it, too.  Everytime something remotely funny happened he'd make it a point to laugh loudly and in as fake a manner as possible.  I think he got sick of it, though, after about the first 45 minutes, and he finally calmed down.

First fifteen minutes of this flick made me think I'm going to see something special here, but that's just because I was taken by the brilliant craftsmanship displayed (that, and the lingering aftereffects of seeing the Life Aquatic trailer -- oh, and the atrocious Seed of Chucky trailer).  Once I got past that, though, the flick itself was still very good.  Some of the writing was just amazing (the dicks/pussies/assholes monologue will probably be the best moment of writing dialogue-wise we see all year), and some just amazingly bad (though that might have been purposeful, I thought some of it could've been fine-tuned a little bit more).  The F.A.G. thing was just pathetic.  Not funny "ha-ha" but funny "ugh."  The puppet sex scene was the other great highlight of the movie.  I've read rumors that a golden shower and pearl necklace were cut -- any credence to that?

I loved Jong Il's solo (and after the credits he sings some more which I don't think made the movie -- about how Alec Baldwin is useless or something -- pretty good stuff too).  America, Fuck yeah! was a great song, too -- all the musical numbers, one of the thing these do guys thrive at, were highlights of the film.  Also, some of you may remember the episodes of South Park, "Asspen" and "Child Abduction is Not Funny": from "Asspen" was taken the "you've put it in a montage" song (brilliant, hilarious, especially for filmmakers), and from CAiNF, the whole "shitty wall!  Stupid Mongolians!" Asian restauranteur voice used here for Kim Jong-Il.  Couldn't help but think of that every time I heard him talk, and maybe they should've considered hiring a few voice actors just to add a little more variety.

I don't think the film as a whole is brilliant or anything.  Just good.  It started with a bang, but it went on a bit too long, and it really shied away from some targets it should've hit while attacking targets that simply didn't deserve it.  Stone's and Parker's philosophy is "shut up because you have no clue what you're talking about -- and we don't either."  They take pride in that.  But that's not exactly smart, and in the past, they've at least purported themselves to be smarter than that, and to have something to say, so I expected more from them.  That they don't pretend to know the answers to these problems is okay, but to shy away from taking a stab at it and to make fools out of people who do is just immature and counter-productive.

I admire people who speak out with an informed opinion.  Actors get a lot of flak for that because they aren't expected to be intelligent people -- but the actors portrayed in this film are on average intelligent people with well-formed opinions.  They merely have the luxury of expressing those opinions and should not be berated for that.  Trey Parker is a self-proclaimed Libertarian (or so I've read -- some say Stone is Libertarian, Parker is Republican, which would explain a lot), yet all the people he pokes fun at are liberals, and he doesn't mock one conservative.  It seems to me this movie started out making fun of everyone, but lost sight of that goal fast.  If you're looking for an "answer," for an alternative to F9/11, I guess you could look here, but you won't find as much in the way of substance.  It was good for a laugh, though.

[Jeremy Blackman]

The hair on Gary's face. Has no one mentioned the hair on Gary's face?

[hedwig]

The hair on Gary's face. Has no one mentioned the hair on Gary's face?

And his 'darkened skin'.

[El Duderino]

The hair on Gary's face. Has no one mentioned the hair on Gary's face?

it's uncanny!

[modage]

I admire people who speak out with an informed opinion.  Actors get a lot of flak for that because they aren't expected to be intelligent people -- but the actors portrayed in this film are on average intelligent people with well-formed opinions.  They merely have the luxury of expressing those opinions and should not be berated for that.  Trey Parker is a self-proclaimed Libertarian (or so I've read -- some say Stone is Libertarian, Parker is Republican, which would explain a lot), yet all the people he pokes fun at are liberals, and he doesn't mock one conservative.  It seems to me this movie started out making fun of everyone, but lost sight of that goal fast.  If you're looking for an "answer," for an alternative to F9/11, I guess you could look here, but you won't find as much in the way of substance.  It was good for a laugh, though.

i think they dont mind actors having an opinion, but appearing on news shows with that opinion as if anyone should listen to them as an authority or anyone other than 'another citizen who cares', is ridiculous.  i think they have both said to be pretty down the middle guys, neither left or right leaning totally.  they have said in countless interviews anyone who goes into a movie (this or any other) looking for answers is an idiot.

[Ravi]

TA was hilarious, but I saw it more as a collection of brilliant individual moments.  The mocking of 90s action thriller conventions was terrific, particularly the use of songs and the "America fuck yeah" patriotism of those films.  But it was sort of lacking something.  I can't pinpoint what it was.

I liked the skewering of celebrities who think their opinions are any more important than, say, mine, even if I do agree with many of them, though, as mentioned before, there weren't any conservative celebs mocked.  The conservatives were mocked by the whole Team America concept, and decimating Paris and Cairo and claiming the terrorist threat was over, the red, white, and blue everywhere, etc.  But if you are going to mock one side, you should mock the other one too.  Neither side has a monopoly on stupid people.  Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter are such easy targets!

The "montage" song was used in a South Park episode once before, so for me it didn't have the impact of the other songs, but it did fit in the film.

[ono]

they have said in countless interviews anyone who goes into a movie (this or any other) looking for answers is an idiot.

Then they've totally missed the point, and proven their ignorance.  Film can provide answers for those willing to actually use their brains instead of just settling for mindless entertainment.  See: The Thin Blue Line.  This could've been both: it could've been entertainment, and that brilliant satire JB spoke of.  It just fell short.

But it was sort of lacking something. I can't pinpoint what it was.

Exactly.  Though I think we (and SHAFTR) sense what it was, and we've all touched on it.

The "montage" song was used in a South Park episode once before, so for me it didn't have the impact of the other songs, but it did fit in the film.

Yep.  "Asspen" was the episode, as I mentioned before.  One of their better ones, too.  Great send-up of 80s films of a certain disposition.

[Ravi]

No real point is made about the actors' activism; they exist in the movie essentially to be ridiculed for existing at all, I guess.

He has a point here.  I don't recall the film mentioning or hinting at actors not being an authority on politics.  They are simply written as evil villains and not much more.  Thinking about the film a day later I wish it ws a little smarter in its commentary.  The film succeeds in skewering action film cliches but not so much with current politics.

The guy who laughs at "F.A.G." must be touring the country, because he was in my theater as well.  That or there are a lot of morons out there.

[Weak2ndAct]

Just saw TA.  It's not the greatest movie ever, but dammit if I didn't laugh quite a bit.  The only thing missing to make the Bruck/Bay satire complete was the low-angle-slo-mo-360 shot.

[Finn]

I laughed a lot. Some of it I think was crude just for the sake of shocking the audience. But they did some creative stuff with it.

[Myxo]

This is why I can't stand Roger Ebert. His review of Team America..

Oh, and as always - SPOILERS

***

If this dialogue is not inscribed over the doors of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it should be. Their "Team America: World Police" is an equal opportunity offender, and waves of unease will flow over first one segment of their audience, and then another. Like a cocky teenager who's had a couple of drinks before the party, they don't have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible.

Their strategy extends even to their decision to use puppets for all of their characters, a choice that will not be universally applauded. Their characters, one-third lifesize, are clearly artificial, and yet there's something going on around the mouths and lips that looks halfway real, as if they were inhabited by the big faces with moving mouths from the Conan O'Brien show. There are times when the characters risk falling into the Uncanny Valley, that rift used by robot designers to describe robots that alarm us by looking too humanoid.

The plot seems like a collision at the screenplay factory between several half-baked world-in-crisis movies. Team America, a group not unlike the Thunderbirds, bases its rockets, jets and helicopters inside Mount Rushmore, which is hollow, and race off to battle terrorism wherever it is suspected. In the opening sequence, they swoop down on Paris and fire on caricatures of Middle East desperadoes, missing most of them but managing to destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre.

Regrouping, the team's leader, Spottswoode (voice by Daran Norris) recruits a Broadway actor named Gary to go undercover for them. When first seen, Gary (voice by Parker) is starring in the musical "Lease," and singing "Everyone has AIDS." Ho, ho. Spottswoode tells Gary: "You're an actor with a double major in theater and world languages! Hell, you're the perfect weapon!" There's a big laugh when Gary is told that, if captured, he may want to kill himself and is supplied with a suicide device I will not reveal.

Spottswoode's plan: Terrorists are known to be planning to meet at "a bar in Cairo." The Team America helicopter will land in Cairo, and four uniformed team members will escort Gary, his face crudely altered to look "Middle Eastern," to the bar, where he will go inside and ask whazzup. As a satire on our inability to infiltrate other cultures, this will do, I suppose. It leads to an ill-advised adventure where in the name of fighting terrorism, Team America destroys the Pyramids and the Sphinx. But it turns out the real threat comes from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Il (voice also by Parker), who plans to unleash "9/11 times 2,356." No. 1 on his list: Blowing up the Panama Canal.

Opposing Team America is the Film Actors' Guild, or F.A.G., ho, ho,
with puppets representing Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Matt Damon, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn (who has written an angry letter to Parker and Stone about their comments, in Rolling Stone, that there is "no shame" in not voting). No real point is made about the actors' activism; they exist in the movie essentially to be ridiculed for existing at all, I guess. Hans Blix, the U.N. chief weapons inspector, also turns up, and has a fruitless encounter with the North Korean dictator. Some of the scenes are set to music, including such tunes as "Pearl Harbor Sucked and I Miss You" and "America -- F***, Yeah!"

If I were asked to extract a political position from the movie, I'd be baffled. It is neither for nor against the war on terrorism, just dedicated to ridiculing those who wage it and those who oppose it. The White House gets a free pass, since the movie seems to think Team America makes its own policies without political direction.

I wasn't offended by the movie's content so much as by its nihilism. At a time when the world is in crisis and the country faces an important election, the response of Parker, Stone and company is to sneer at both sides -- indeed, at anyone who takes the current world situation seriously. They may be right that some of us are puppets, but they're wrong that all of us are fools, and dead wrong that it doesn't matter.

[ono]

Pwaybloe already posted that on the previous page.  The link, anyway.  And you missed the The Wild One quote which leads into the first paragraph.

I don't get why people always bitch about a critic just because they dumped on one movie they really like.  The more I think about it, the more I see some of his points, yet the more I also realize in some ways, yeah, he was off.  But to hold up just one review as to why you don't like any critic, let alone Ebert, is shortsighted.

[Myxo]

How about Fight Club? I donno about you, but most film lovers would agree it is one of their favorite films and quite possibly one of the best films of the 90s.

Here's some portions of his review.

The problem with Roger Ebert lies in the fact that he cannot review a movie which he finds distasteful. If he sees something socially wrong in his eyes or unecessarily violent, he pans it. Take a look at his review of Resevoir Dogs. He did the same thing.

"Fight Club" is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since "Death Wish," a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up.

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything," he says, sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche display on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He's a bully--Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor.

None of the Fight Club members grows stronger or freer because of their membership; they're reduced to pathetic cultists.

"Fight Club" is not about its ending but about its action.

Although sophisticates will be able to rationalize the movie as an argument against the behavior it shows, my guess is that audience will like the behavior but not the argument. Certainly they'll buy tickets because they can see Pitt and Norton pounding on each other; a lot more people will leave this movie and get in fights than will leave it discussing Tyler Durden's moral philosophy. The images in movies like this argue for themselves, and it takes a lot of narration (or Narration) to argue against them.

When you see good actors in a project like this, you wonder if they signed up as an alternative to canyoneering.

In many ways, it's like Fincher's movie "The Game" (1997), with the violence cranked up for teenage boys of all ages.

But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get. "Fight Club" is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy--the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again.

[ono]

I agree with you that Ebert was way off on Fight Club (not to get off on a tangent).  It was one of the best of the 90s.  The Game, OTOH, was crap (which really makes Fincher a quite overrated director who one wonders why he even has a forum here -- but I digress), so I don't know why he bothers comparing the two.  He liked The Game, IIRC, and that they both were made by Fincher is their only comparison.  He's way off on Donnie Darko, too, and on a lot of other films.  Though saying he's "off" is only saying you disagree with him, and maybe (a big maybe) that his logic is off.  Which, in a lot of cases, it is.  He's just the most known and regarded critic, which is why he gets the most attention, but positive and negative.  And generally, if I see something "socially wrong or unnecessarily violent" in a film, unless there is a great point to it (like there is in Fight Club), I tend to take a negative opinion about it.  That's what you call gratuity, and the less of that there is in films, the better.

[Sal]

I respect Ebert.  A lot.  

But his Team America review was problematic for me in that, he didn't actually talk about the film, which is what he did with Fight Club, and which is indicative of his weaknesses.  He lets shit get to him and then he stops playing fair.

He didnt say a fucking thing about the movie.  Whether or not it actually had merits of its own, at least in craftmanship.  No, no.  Instead, he takes the political route, which is not what Trey and Matt wanted people to come away with.  They regard humor and laughter much higher than Ebert does.  For Ebert, it's a goddamned sin in the face of such a "serious time."  Bullshit.  That kind of thinking is exactly what they wanted to steer away from, and exactly the reason this movie is so important right now.  

Team America - 1
Ebert - 0