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It's not you, it's the gorillas.
Feb. 6th, 2005 09:48 amI dragged Robin off, kicking and screaming, to see Team America: World Police at the IMU. (This is the action movie with the marionettes, remember?) The "Best-Of" South Park marathon had finally taught me some respect for its creators (yay Ninja Weapons!) so I felt obliged to check it out.
The ultimate problem with TA:WP is that it tries to parody action movies by following the most generic action-movie formula to its last beat. It's amusing at first, but when the story (so to speak) gets going, it's as empty as any other Hollywood action movie. You no longer get random pot-shots at pop culture like LEASE: the musical, and instead get marionettes going through the paces of an action movie you wouldn't particularly want to see.
The other problem (again, more with the second half than with the first), is that the much-touted "we take no sides" satire ultimately ends up being no satire at all. Example: Michael Moore pops up in a marionette cameo as a crazy fat protester, whom they make fun of because he's... fat. And crazy, I guess, although how and why he's crazy in a Michael Moorish way is not clear to me. They *could* have parodied Michael Moore's documentary style, which is what, apart from oscar speeches, he's best known for. But then in order to be it to be funny, the audience would have had to know more about Michael Moore than his name.
Similarly, they have Matt Damon in as an evil henchman at one point, and the joke is that he is unable to say anything other than his name. It's a one-note joke, and there doesn't seem to be any reason it's connected to Matt Damon and not, say, Michael Moore. (As far as I know, Matt Damon doesn't have a rep of being one of the "dumb" Hollywood actors, which would have made more sense.)
That's the way it goes with all the "real life" characters they parody. With the exception of maybe Hans Blix (you need to know he's a weapons inspector) you wouldn't need to know anything about the real life people to "get" the parody - in fact, you wouldn't need to know they were real people at all. Which makes it not much of a parody, imo.
The last thing I found sort of interesting us that, for all the movie claims to be centrist in its politics, it doesn't target any well-known right wing figures in the movie. No Bush, no Jerry Falwell, nada. While I know the whole "Team America: World police" thing is meant to be a send-up of a Right Wing world view, the right-wing satire is all in its premise: Team America (marionettes) charges round the world blowing up terrorists and world monuments! There's nothing in the movie itself that challenges the pov that Team America is doing everything right (except maybe blowing up the pyramids) and the silly left-wing protesters are doing everything wrong.
Well, for all that, I enjoyed the movie. It was silly, and might make a good movie to show a genre class. It would also have made a far better 1/2 hour South Park episode, but whatever.
The ultimate problem with TA:WP is that it tries to parody action movies by following the most generic action-movie formula to its last beat. It's amusing at first, but when the story (so to speak) gets going, it's as empty as any other Hollywood action movie. You no longer get random pot-shots at pop culture like LEASE: the musical, and instead get marionettes going through the paces of an action movie you wouldn't particularly want to see.
The other problem (again, more with the second half than with the first), is that the much-touted "we take no sides" satire ultimately ends up being no satire at all. Example: Michael Moore pops up in a marionette cameo as a crazy fat protester, whom they make fun of because he's... fat. And crazy, I guess, although how and why he's crazy in a Michael Moorish way is not clear to me. They *could* have parodied Michael Moore's documentary style, which is what, apart from oscar speeches, he's best known for. But then in order to be it to be funny, the audience would have had to know more about Michael Moore than his name.
Similarly, they have Matt Damon in as an evil henchman at one point, and the joke is that he is unable to say anything other than his name. It's a one-note joke, and there doesn't seem to be any reason it's connected to Matt Damon and not, say, Michael Moore. (As far as I know, Matt Damon doesn't have a rep of being one of the "dumb" Hollywood actors, which would have made more sense.)
That's the way it goes with all the "real life" characters they parody. With the exception of maybe Hans Blix (you need to know he's a weapons inspector) you wouldn't need to know anything about the real life people to "get" the parody - in fact, you wouldn't need to know they were real people at all. Which makes it not much of a parody, imo.
The last thing I found sort of interesting us that, for all the movie claims to be centrist in its politics, it doesn't target any well-known right wing figures in the movie. No Bush, no Jerry Falwell, nada. While I know the whole "Team America: World police" thing is meant to be a send-up of a Right Wing world view, the right-wing satire is all in its premise: Team America (marionettes) charges round the world blowing up terrorists and world monuments! There's nothing in the movie itself that challenges the pov that Team America is doing everything right (except maybe blowing up the pyramids) and the silly left-wing protesters are doing everything wrong.
Well, for all that, I enjoyed the movie. It was silly, and might make a good movie to show a genre class. It would also have made a far better 1/2 hour South Park episode, but whatever.
