Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Team America: World Police Blu-ray Movie Review

Ya Gotta Have a Puppet

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 11, 2015

I mean, I love Team America. I'm glad we did it, I'm proud of it. But would I ever do it again? No. — Matt Stone

The comic bad-boy duo of Trey Parker and Matt Stone have several fan bases. The largest are habitual viewers of their satirical animated series, South Park, now in its nineteenth season on the Comedy Central network. More occasional (but no less devoted) fans are those who appreciate the Parker/Stone parodies of popular art forms, especially musical theater. These are the people who flocked to the pair's theatrical debut, The Book of Mormon, when it was still in previews and no one knew whether it would even survive the opening. (The show is now in its fifth year.)

During those early performances, Parker and Stone sat in a box near the front of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, focusing intently not on the stage but on the audience below, studying reactions to every song and gag. (I know this, because I was in one of the preview audiences they were observing.) Seated next to them was their co-writer on Mormon, Robert Lopez, who had already achieved theatrical success with Avenue Q, a musical entirely about puppets and their travails in life. Thus did fate conspire to unite the creative forces behind two 21st Century classics of puppetry to write a hugely successful musical about the equally unlikely subject of Mormonism.

There should never have been any doubt that Parker and Stone could write a popular musical for the stage, because they'd already done it twice for the movies: once with the big screen version of their TV show, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (or "SP:BLU"); and then again with Team America: World Police, their tribute to "Supermarionated" shows of the Sixties such as Thunderbirds and Supercar. Both SP:BLU and Team America employed time-honored musical theater devices that Parker has confessed on numerous occasions are dear to his heart. (He cries at Les Miserables.) He has proudly reported being complimented on the songs of both films by no less an authority than Stephen Sondheim.

SP:BLU has long been available on Blu-ray. Paramount is now releasing Team America on Blu-ray through its licensing and distribution deal with Warner. Unfortunately, although the film is decently represented, Paramount has omitted the substantial extras previously included on its DVDs of Team America.

The "actors" in Team America are marionettes with visible strings. The story is a parody of action movies. The style was drawn directly from the oeuvre of producer Jerry Bruckheimer. According to cinematographer Bill Pope, the mantra on-set was, "What would Bruckheimer do?", to which Team America's answer usually involves blowing up something or gunning down someone. (To ensure that imitation is not mistaken for the sincerest form of flattery, the score contains a song called "The End of an Act" that thoroughly trashes the Bruckheimer-produced Pearl Harbor and includes the refrain: "Pearl Harbor sucked!") For raw material, the team and their co-writer, South Park alum Pam Brady, drew on current events, much as South Park continues to do to this day.

The supposed good guys known as "Team America" are an elite corps of anti-terrorism specialists commanded by Spottswood (Daran Norris, doing an impression of Charlton Heston) from a not-so-secret base inside the monument at Mt. Rushmore. Dispensing with such distractions as sovereign borders, diplomacy and international agreements, these hot shots fly into troubled zones in aircraft gaudily painted red, white and blue, then proceed to mop up in minutes what the entire U.S. military could not handle in years. There's always time to pause during the battle for a deep, personal confession of private pain, a declaration of long-buried love or a confrontation with some inner demon à la Top Gun. The master computer, I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. (voiced by Phil Hendrie), keeps Team America on track—most of the time.

In the opening sequence, former quarterback Joe (Parker), blonde psychologist Lisa (Kristen Miller), martial arts expert Chris (Stone), brunette empath Sarah (Masasa Moyo) and cannon fodder Carson (Parker again) defeat a terrorist attack on Paris, although they do destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and the Arc d'Triomphe in the process. Carson is killed, causing sorrow and guilt that will haunt Team America for a long, long time (or at least until the end of the movie). Spottswood decides that what the team needs more than anything is an actor who can go undercover and learn the secrets of a rumored terrorist plot that will dwarf 9/11. He recruits Gary Johnston (Parker yet again), a talented performer currently starring in the hit Broadway musical, Lease. (If the title alone doesn't crack you up, there's a whole side to Parker and Stone that you're missing.)

Most of the plot concerns Gary's efforts to quell his inner doubts, win Lisa's heart and overcome Chris's distrust of all actors (which stems from a secret childhood trauma), all the while defusing the dastardly plan of the real terrorist mastermind, North Korea's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il (also voiced by Parker, with a politically incorrect accent). Kim's stooges include a host of Middle Eastern front men, as well as a bevy of Hollywood celebrities belonging to a SAG-like union called the "Film Actors Guild" (and yes, the name results in an acronym that's a juvenile joke). Led by its president, Alec Baldwin (who reportedly offered to supply his own voice but is instead voiced by Maurice LeMarche), the Guild argues for peace, thereby serving as a timely diversion for Kim while he carries out his attack. Eventually most of these celebs die in an extreme style worthy of a Bruckheimer villain. Actress and liberal commentator Janeane Garafolo has said that she was never more famous than when Parker and Stone put her with George Clooney as a bad guy in Team America. (Clooney, who worked with Parker/Stone on SP:BLU, said he'd have been offended if they had omitted him.)



Viewers of different political leanings and ideological stamps have often projected their own views onto Parker and Stone. In the case of Team America, which was released in October 2004, the two were accused of trying to influence the upcoming elections—but it's not clear in what direction. The pair remain equal opportunity offenders, cheerfully spraying parody and satire with the same abandon as Gary Johnston spews vomit after a night of heavy drinking (he outdoes Mr. Creosote in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life). The terrorists may rain down death and destruction on the innocent, but so does Team America (accompanied by a rousing theme song that's a parody of every fight anthem ever written). The Film Actors Guild may be full of hypocrites and clowns, but the film's hero, male love interest and the salvation of Team America is also an actor. Notably missing from Team America are the politicians, diplomats and military leaders who are really calling the shots (unless one counts U.N. nuclear inspector Hans Blix, who quickly disappears). Much like the marionettes that play them, the characters of Team America are pop culture cliches, conceptual images manipulated by strings (visible and otherwise), whose reality is as much an artificial construct as the Matrix. Even Team America's version of Kim Jong-Il is no longer the real historical figure. He's the familiar misanthrope of a Disney cartoon, who wouldn't be so evil if he weren't so misunderstood, as he explains in one of the film's best songs, "I'm so Ronery". Other highlights include "Montage" when Gary is training and "Derka Derk", a parody of the Star Wars cantina theme, both of which have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with pop culture.

Where Team America suffers is in its overall tone. Parker and Stone later acknowledged in interviews that they went back and forth on including their usual potty-mouthed humor, eventually opting to leave it in. At their best, as in SP:BLU, the pair move so fluidly between real issues and childish silliness that you've constantly off-balance, and the serious messages slide in under the radar, even as you're gasping with laughter at the outrageous nonsense. But in SP:BLU, the team was working with characters they knew well and a style of animation they had mastered on TV. Team America required them to invent a whole new cast while simultaneously developing an entirely new way of working in an alien style of filmmaking that, as they later acknowledged, was much tougher than they expected. In the production's aftermath, reports circulated that the comic duo had split from the strain, but the rumors were false; it was only the work that suffered. It lacks the final polishing that might have elevated Team America to the first rank of Parker's and Stone's work. (The pair never even had time to view the whole film from start to finish until release prints were being screened.) As the final product stands, individual sequences stand out, but the film often feels labored—and comedy should seem effortless.

Team America: World Police Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Matrix trilogy's cinematographer, Bill Pope, shot Team America: World Police, and he has spoken at length about the challenges of recreating an action movie style with puppets and miniature sets. Although the film was released in 2004, there is no indication in the credits or elsewhere that post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, although digital effects were employed, including compositing of multiple figures, where the scene called for more puppets than could be accommodated on a single set.

The 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray being distributed by Warner appears to be the exact same disc that Paramount released abroad in 2013. The plethora of language options indicates that the data package has been prepared for worldwide release, whereas discs specially prepared for North American coverage under the Paramount/Warner licensing detail have typically been limited to English, French and/or Spanish. However, even though the transfer isn't brand new, it's reasonably good, due in no small part to the crisp lighting style. Detail is good, blacks are solid and colors are strong without oversaturation. The film's Super35 photography is fine-grained, but the grain pattern does not appear to have suffered from untoward digital manipulation. With no extras to take up space (see below), Team America has been authored at an average bitrate of 33.74 Mbps, and the compression has been carefully done.

Note that the location shots of Gary Johnston at national monuments during "Freedom Isn't Free" are of noticeably lesser quality than the rest of the film, but this appears to be inherent to the source.

Team America: World Police Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As much as a film featuring puppets can have an aggressive sound mix, Team America has a kind of parody of an action soundtrack, with much gunfire, numerous explosions and sounds of aircraft cruising, diving, evading and dogfighting. Bass extension is serious but not excessive. Dialogue is always clear, even with some of the outlandish accents adopted by Parker and Stone in their efforts to differentiate multiple characters. Henry Gregson-Williams had only a short time in which to compose the score, after the studio rejected Mark Shaiman's version, but Gregson-Williams had worked on enough Bruckheimer projects to turn around something that was both comic and authentic, and it sounds great. The songs, by either Parker, or Parker with Shaiman, sound equally good.

Team America: World Police Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Paramount released three DVD editions of Team America in 2005 (theatrical widescreen, theatrical fullscreen and unrated widescreen), and all of them came with the same rich collection of extras: trailers, deleted scenes, animated storyboards and nine featurettes. The Blu-ray has none of these extras or, indeed, any extras at all. Also, unlike most previous Paramount releases through Warner, this disc appears to have been prepared entirely by Paramount; the company's logo flashes briefly when the disc loads. The only positive note is that bookmarking functionality has been included with the BD-Java coding.

Team America: World Police Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In an interview given just as Team America was being released, Parker and Stone acknowledged that many people would probably hate the film. Although it recouped its cost, it saw nothing like the success of SP:BLU. Maybe it was the era, but then again the so-called "war on terror" remains as polarizing an issue today as it was in 2004. Regardless of one's views on the subject, Team America is a unique film by anyone's standard. Avoid it if you're easily offended, but otherwise it's worth your time. The Blu-ray is technically acceptable, but for leaving off all the extras, Paramount/Warner shouldn't get anything more than a rock-bottom sale price.