Caliente

'Team America' hangs together

It's no fun to be strung along - unless you're watching the marionette-employing, spray-gun satire of "Team America: World Police." Artfully and comically bojangling through ribald, politically incorrect minefields on which Pinocchio would fear to tread, foul-mouthed "South Park" impresarios Trey Parker and Matt Stone dish out an equal-opportunity slapdown to those on the Liberal Left, Self-Righteous Right and anyone in between. The crack comedy pits itself against all facets of the sociopolitical spectrum, unleashing a hail of witty, "Daily Show"-worthy needles at such solemn subjects as the global war on terror and the United States' uncomfortable hegemonism in a land of antagonistic unrest. The movie also manages to find time for a few throw-up jokes. Through the skewed lens of Stone and Parker, Michael Moore is as dogmatic and dangerous as a suicide bomber, and Kim Jong Il is a lonely old man who emulates prototypical James Bond villains. "Team America" is also a thorough charbroiling of big, dumb action flicks. Every line and plot development is engineered to twang a flaming arrow at an action cliché, from the overhead "No-o-oo!" shot of a mourner following a dramatic death, to the musical training montage to the climactic explosives countdown. And in case any of this is too subtle, the lyrics "Pearl Harbor sucks" repeat in one of the tunes. It's a love song. The Team America of the title is an attack squad of well-armed soldiers who romp around the globe, seeking out terrorists and WMDs. Team America shoots first, asks questions never and rarely pauses to consider the implications of its moves. When a team member in hot pursuit of an enemy misfires a rocket launcher and destroys a sacred landmark such as the Louvre or a Great Pyramid, he'll growl, "Damn, I missed." Boorish American centrism is an ongoing theme. As Team America travels from one global hot spot to another, each locale is introduced with a subtitle detailing the city's distance from the United States, and the people in the streets speak in nonsensical gibberish. After the opening-scene death of a Team American, the benevolent gray-haired leader looks to recruit a new member. We go to Broadway, where the prospective new recruit, an actor named Gary (voiced by Parker), is wowing the crowd by singing "Everyone Has AIDS" in a musical called "Lease." Gary is whisked off to Team America's headquarters, located inside Mount Rushmore. He and the rest of the squad, made up of various gung-ho hero types, unravel a terrorist conspiracy led by Kim Jong Il while avoiding backbiting at home, led by Moore's hatefulness and the Sean Penn- and Tim Robbins-led Film Actors Guild. The fights, comical for their crass intentional sloppiness, consist of marionettes face to face, with the opponents' jiggling appendages haphazardly flopping at one another. After a few seconds, one doll drops to the floor while the victor dances around in conquering jubilation. The sex scenes are filmed with more, uh, precision, so much so that Parker and Stone had to cut out several shots to avoid an NC-17 rating. Just as in Parker and Stone's last film effort, "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut" (1999), there's an uncomfortably near-homophobic subtext running throughout. It's unclear whether stereotypes are being held up for mockery or indulged for cheap, ignorant chuckles. Stone and Parker have been around long enough to deserve the benefit of the doubt, and besides, it's hard to analyze intentions when you're laughing so hard.