Team America

Roger Simon:

...The film hits too close to home for some of the establishment reviewers. Roger Ebert was offended and gave it only one star. The NYT's A. O. Scott carefully takes the zing out of his "favorable" notice by saying "The movie is more satisfying as straight-ahead blow 'em up than as a satire." Nonsense. The movie is pure, unrelenting Rabelaisian satire and those being ridiculed are people just like Scott, the self-satisfied purveyors of the Zabar's Zeitgeist. As the recent behavior of Sean Penn indicates, it is very hard to laugh when you are the butt of the joke.

...

The good news, however, is that the first major studio release about the War on Terror is actually in favor of the war. Even though Team America accidentally destroys the Louvre and the Sphinx, among numerous other monuments of civilization, and seems to revel in or be oblivious to collateral damage of all sorts, you know they are doing the right thing in the end. Terrorists are seen as objects of derision, of course. But the true targets of the filmmakers' venom are the narcissistic Hollywood actors who pretend to oppose the war but who are actually... I believe it was Glenn Reynolds who wrote this originally... on the other side - in this case case quite literally (a superbly portrayed Kim Jong Il). I don't believe I will ever look at any of these actors again the same way. Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the South Park duo) have demolished their pretensions forever. These men are brilliant filmmakers. All "tech creds," as they say in the business - puppets, sets, editing, etc. - are great. They know what they are doing on a level that make the objects of their satire, well, mere actors.

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