By a Thread
By Marvin DeWolfe
Staff Writer
An all-marionette cast strings you along
for the ride as they crisscross the globe fighting
terrorists
The creators of South Park are out to get us
again with their irreverent wit and grand vision
in their new movie, Team America: World Police.
The story is, of course, all fiction but is based
on real world stuff, so you might want to bone
up on currents events if you don’t want
to miss any of the jokes.
It seems that Kim Jong Il is selling weapons
of mass destruction to terrorists, and broadway
actor Gary Johnston is recruited to infiltrate
the terrorist network to help Team America, an
international police force, foil their plans.
This movie is like South Park on steroids.
The sets are huge, the characters are even more
huge, and the language would make a sailor’s
wife blush. This film is definitely not for kids,
or even some adults.
It doesn’t take itself too seriously though,
or the rest of the world for that matter. Everyone
gets it in one way or another, even poor old Hans
Blix in an especially funny scene in Kim Jong
Il’s palace.
The actors are all marionettes whose voices will
be very familiar to South Park fans. And, in keeping
with the writers’ tongue-in-cheek humor,
they make no bones about acknowledging that they
are, after all, just puppets.
The actors hop around the set like, well, like
puppets on a string. You’re not supposed
to get so wrapped up in the plot that you forget
that these are puppets.
Though the entire cast was moved about the set
with strings, their facial movements were made
by servomotors implanted in each of the puppets’
heads. This allowed their eyes to blink and mouths
to move.
Then there’s the action –lots of
it. There are floods and explosions that take
place on more than 100 sets, including Mt. Rushmore
(Team America’s hideout), Paris, London
and India. You name it and there’s a set
for it.
One scene, aptly named “Fight Palace,”
features one of the team who has infiltrated Kim
Jong Il’s palace, and, in a very Matrixesque
fashion, is confronted by more minions than is,
of course, humanly possible.
Team America is rated R, and rightly
so. The language alone could get that rating itself.
Adding to that is the irreverent style of humor
which thrashes political correctness and throws
it out the nearest window, but what do you expect
from the guys who gave us Mr. Hanky the Christmas
Poo?
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