“There is no ‘I’ in Team America”
Welcome to Harbour Highlights, a series of cult and classic favourites, handpicked by the staff at Harbour Lights. Following on from our screening of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, we’re adding a bonus screening of Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s follow-up film: Team America: World Police.
Conceived as a homage to Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds and a send-up of late 90s action films, the result is a loving parody of Hollywood excess acted out through marionette puppets. Produced and filmed as America entered into the Iraq war, the film takes a satirical swipe at jingoistic patriotism, American politics and self-serious actors, all to scenes of gratuitous explosions, gratuitous language and gratuitous puppet sex scenes – not to mention a musical soundtrack so good that Stephen Sondheim wrote Stone and Parker a self-proclaimed fan letter.
A mild critical and box office disappointment at the time, the film was quick to find fans in the years that followed. Twenty years later, it remains as ridiculous, silly and funny as ever and a scathing look at the politics and attitudes of 2004. With every element obsessively perfected by Stone and Parker (a pair of puppet eye-glasses used real prescription lenses and tiny prop Uzis would cost $1,000 to make) and with cinematography by the legendary Bill Pope, it’s a film well worth discovering on the big screen. Only there can the volumes of puppet vomit be truly appreciated.
