Team America: World Police (2004)
★★★½ — Team America: World Police (2004)
Trey Parker and Matt Stone arrived at Team America fresh off the South Park movie (Bigger, Longer and Uncut, 1999) and with their long-running Comedy Central series at full steam, which gave Paramount enough confidence to hand them $32 million to make an R-rated marionette action film. The production, partly backed by German money through Scott Rudin's company, required an entirely bespoke puppet workshop, with around 200 puppets built for the shoot and miniature sets constructed to give the film its deliberately absurd Thunderbirds-adjacent aesthetic. Released in October 2004, just weeks before a US presidential election and three years into the post-9/11 "war on terror", the film landed at a moment of genuine political friction, satirising both hawkish American foreign policy and the celebrity anti-war movement in more or less equal measure.
They would NEVER make something like this today. There’s truly nothing else like this and there probably never will be again. Taking an out-of-date art form like puppetry and turning it into a full-blown, foul-mouthed, politically incorrect action-comedy is insane. But somehow… it works. The puppetry is oddly impressive like watching tiny marionettes fight, cry, and have the most awkward sex scene in cinema is still hysterical. The sheer ingenuity behind it earns respect on its own. The script is razor-sharp and deeply stupid in the best way. The songs are hilarious. “America, F*** Yeah” is still stuck in my head twenty years later, and “I’m So Ronery” is something me and my buddies quote whenever activities are planned and someone is left out. Yes, it skates very close to the edge (some jokes absolutely wouldn’t fly today) but it’s clearly satire dialled up to 100. Whether it’s mocking Hollywood, American foreign policy, or literally every global stereotype imaginable, Team America pulls no punches. Trey Parker and Matt Stone made something bold, chaotic, and completely unrepeatable. Brilliant.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2004 | Watched: 2025-04-07
Where to watch (UK)
Stream: Now TV Cinema
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Trey Parker: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
More with Trey Parker: BASEketball (1998) · South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) · Despicable Me 3 (2017)
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More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
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