Team America: World Police

Team America: World Police
File:Movie poster team america.jpg
Directed by	Trey Parker
Written by	Trey Parker Matt Stone Pam Brady
Produced by	Frank C. Agnone II Amine Tay Anne Garefino Trey Parker Michael Polaire Scott Rudin Matt Stone
Starring	Trey Parker Matt Stone Kristen Miller Masasa Moyo Daran Norris Maurice LaMarche Jeremy Shada Fred Tatasciore
Cinematography	Bill Pope
Music by	Harry Gregson-Williams
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	October 15, 2004 (Theaters) May 17, 2005 (DVD and VHS)
Running time	98 min.
Language	English
Budget	$30,000,000
Box office	$50,907,422

Team America: World Police is a 2004 comedy film, written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Pam Brady and directed by Parker, all of whom are also known for the popular animated series South Park. The film is a parody of big-budget action films and their associated clichés and stereotypes, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the resulting war, with particular humorous emphasis on the global implications of American politics. The title of the film itself is derived from domestic and international political criticisms that the U.S. frequently and unilaterally tries to "police the world".

The film features a cast composed of marionettes (except for two live cats, two nurse sharks, a cockroach, and an adult male dressed as a giant statue of Kim Jong-il). It is believed to be the first film to ever depict marionettes having sex. Team America focuses on a fictional team of political paramilitary policemen known as "Team America: World Police," who attempt to save the world from a violent terrorist plot led by Kim Jong-il. The film was primarily inspired by Thunderbirds, a popular British TV show created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson which also featured an all-marionette cast, though Stone and Parker were not fans of the show.

The film was released in the United States on October 15, 2004 and, despite receiving mostly positive reviews, was a box office disappointment. Though it made $51 million it failed to exceed the performance of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. The film was released on DVD in the United States on May 17, 2005, available in both R-rated and Unrated versions.

Cast

Actor	Character(s) (Voice)
Trey Parker	Gary Johnston, Joe, Kim Jong-il, Hans Blix, Carson, Matt Damon, Drunk in Bar, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Helen Hunt, Susan Sarandon, Other voices
Matt Stone	Chris, George Clooney, Danny Glover, Ethan Hawke, Other voices
Kristen Miller	Lisa
Masasa Moyo	Sarah
Daran Norris	Spottswoode
Phil Hendrie	I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E., Chechnyan Terrorist
Maurice LaMarche	Alec Baldwin
Chelsea Marguerite	French Mother
Jeremy Shada	Jean Francois
Fred Tatasciore	Samuel L. Jackson
Scott Land	Lead Puppeteer

Plot

Team America: World Police exists for the sole intention of stopping terrorists from performing evil deeds. With a home base located within the structure of Mount Rushmore, the team comprises Lisa, a young psychologist; Carson, Lisa's love interest; Sarah, an alleged psychic; Joe, a typical all-American jock who is in love with Sarah; and Chris, a technological and martial arts expert who harbors a deep yet mysterious mistrust of actors. The team is led by Spottswoode, a United States government agent, and the team's information is received by I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E., a highly-advanced supercomputer.

The film itself opens with the team interrupting the activities of a group of terrorists in Paris, France. During the ensuing gun-battle, the "Team" manages to lay waste to a good portion of the city, destroying the Eiffel Tower (which then collapses onto and destroys the Arc de Triomphe) and the Louvre among other things. Following the action, Carson proposes to Lisa, but the moment is cut short when a surviving terrorist guns Carson down.

In search of a new member, Spottswoode recruits Gary Johnston, a Broadway actor with college majors in Theater and World Languages. Gary is hired as a spy, utilizing his talents to infiltrate terrorist organizations. Unbeknownst to the team, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is supplying international terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, planning a mysterious worldwide attack.

I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. is informed of a terrorist meeting in Cairo, Egypt, and Gary successfully infiltrates their group; during this time, both Lisa and Sarah become romantically attracted to him. Chris, however, hates Gary, solely because of his resentment toward actors.

Gary is sent in undercover- despite the fact that his disguise is extremely poor, he successfully gains the trust of a terrorist lieutenant. The team attempts to capture the terrorists, and although T. A. successfully foils the terrorist plan, their actions again leave most of the city in ruins. The group is criticized by the Film Actors Guild (F.A.G.), a union of liberal Hollywood actors. The group includes Gary's favorite actor, Alec Baldwin, and his heavy criticism is very discouraging to Gary. Meanwhile, the United Nations assign Hans Blix with the task of inspecting Kim Jong-il's lair, but the investigator is killed by Kim Jong-il's man-eating sharks. As the team relaxes following their victory, Gary expresses his guilt to Lisa, remembering a time where his acting talent caused his brother to be killed by gorillas. As the two express their feelings and have sex (after Gary promises that he'll never die), a group of terrorists blow up the Panama Canal.

The Film Actors Guild blames Team America, believing that they (rather than the terrorists or the person who supplied them with WMDs) are responsible for the terrorists' actions. Gary, realizing his acting talents have once again resulted in tragedy, abandons the team, causing considerable conflict among the remaining members. Believing the terrorists to be operating within Derkaderkastan, the original members depart, only to be attacked and captured by terrorists and the North Koreans. Meanwhile, Michael Moore infiltrates the team's base and destroys their equipment by suicide bombing the area. Kim Jong-il, upset with the terrorists' actions, expresses his frustration and despair ("I'm So Ronery").

Meanwhile, a very depressed Gary becomes an alcoholic, only to be reminded of his responsibility by a drunken drifter, who compares the world's three dominant personalities to human organs ("dicks", "pussies" and "assholes"). Gary then vomits repeatedly for 56 seconds.

In North Korea, Kim Jong-il reveals his plan to host an elaborate peace ceremony, inviting not only the Film Actors Guild but also the world's political leaders. During the celebration, a series of bombs will be detonated throughout the world, reducing every nation to a Third World country. Gary returns to Mount Rushmore and finds the area in ruin, although Spottswoode and I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E have survived. After regaining Spottswoode's trust by performing oral sex on him, and undergoing a one-day training course (deliberately shown in a cliche montage for comic effect), Gary is sent to North Korea.

Gary proceeds to infiltrate the lair and frees the team. They are confronted by the Film Actors Guild and a violent battle ensues, leaving most of the Guild brutally slain. Soon after, Chris confesses to Gary that his mistrust of actors is due to the fact that he was gang-raped by the cast of Cats when he was 19 years old. They confront Kim Jong-il. Although initially unsuccessful, Gary convinces the world's leaders to unite when he recites the drifter's emotional speech. Kim Jong-il is then defeated by Lisa by being impaled on a Pickelhaube worn by the German Kaiser, only to be revealed as an alien cockroach from another planet. Kim Jong-il flees, departing in a miniature spaceship, but promising to return. As Gary and Lisa begin a relationship, the team reunites, preparing to combat the remainder of the world's terrorists.

Targets of satire

On one hand the film satirizes American administrations taking unilateral, aggressive foreign policy actions that critics describe as "policing the world". But on the other hand the film targets liberal, political Hollywood actors who, as portrayed in the film, think they are the most intelligent and most well-informed people and are in the best position to dictate U.S. policy—especially with regard to the War on Terrorism. This attack on Hollywood liberals is most pointed in the name of the actors' association that all the actors belong to, the "Film Actors Guild" (F.A.G.), a play on the Screen Actors Guild.

In an early scene in the film Gary (the main character) is starring in a musical called Lease, singing "Everyone has AIDS". This is a send-up of the musical Rent, where several of the characters are suffering from AIDS. Gary's character is a parody of Mark Cohen, one of the main characters in Rent, evidenced by the scarf Gary is wearing, which is Mark's trademark.

According to Parker and Stone, to avoid being pigeon-holed as simply a movie about the 2004 U.S. election, the film deliberately does not name any American politicians. Kim Jong-il and Hans Blix (who retired as chief UN Weapons Inspector in 2003, one year before the movie came out) are the only political figures directly portrayed in the film. Team America acts without any guidance from the White House or the Department of Defense. However, Team America's incompetent and needlessly destructive operations satirize contemporary American counter-terrorism policies.

Political and social commentator Andrew Sullivan considers the film brilliant in its skewering of both the left and right's approach on terrorism. Sullivan (a fan of Stone and Parker's other work, as well) popularized the term "South Park Republican" to describe himself and other like-minded fiscal conservatives/social libertarians. Parker is a registered Libertarian.

Team America also parodies movies relying on ethnocentrism in their U.S. audience. (In interviews included on the DVD, Parker and Stone explain they did this as a joke—they portrayed foreign locations as an uninformed American would think they look like.) When a new location is shown, the caption will give the place's name followed by the country and its distance from the United States in miles. All famous landmarks in Paris and Cairo are closely located, while languages other than English are gibberish. Despite not using real Korean words in speech, with the exception of one Korean pilot crying "gamsa hamnida!" (which means "thank you" in Korean) before exploding, genuine Hangul is used in the movie. The stereotypical Oriental pronunciation of English "R"s instead of "L"s is used heavily by Kim Jong-il.

The film's opening credits (in which the Paramount logo sequence runs in reverse), as well as the blowing up of famous landmarks, satirizes the film styles of movie makers Michael Bay, Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer, Roland Emmerich, and Dean Devlin. Indeed, one song in the film makes particular reference to how Michael Bay "missed the mark" when he made Pearl Harbor, and that the film "sucked".

The film also references the Star Wars franchise (something also done frequently in South Park), when a terrorist lair in Cairo is depicted in a similar fashion as in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope when Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi go into the Mos Eisley Cantina. The music played in Cairo is similar to that played in A New Hope, and some detail shots of the cantina's patrons are also made after Lucas.

Individuals parodied

Famous people depicted as puppets in the film are Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Helen Hunt, George Clooney, Liv Tyler, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo, Matt Damon, Samuel L. Jackson, Ellen Hughes, Richard Gregory, Danny Glover, Ethan Hawke, Kim Jong-il, Tony Blair, Queen Elizabeth II, Peter Jennings, and Hans Blix. With the exception of Jennings, Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth (and Sheen, whose death is not shown despite being involved in the F.A.G. vs. Team America battle), all are killed in dramatic and extremely violent ways. As is usually the case with South Park, none of the voices used are those of the personalities portrayed.

Reactions from those parodied were mixed. Alec Baldwin reportedly found the project amusing and expressed interest in lending his voice to his character, while Sean Penn, who is portrayed making outlandish claims about how happy and utopian Iraq was before Team America showed up, sent Parker and Stone a letter inviting them to tour Iraq with him, ending with the words "fuck you." Both George Clooney and Matt Damon are said to be friends with Stone and Parker, and Clooney has stated that he would have been insulted had he not been included in the movie. While Damon was meant to be an intelligent person in the movie, Stone and Parker saw during production that his puppet "looked retarded". Inspired by an anecdote Damon tells in which he relates his fatigue with people coming up to him and shouting his name, they decided to have him only able to say his name, like Timmy in South Park.

Kim Jong-il, a noted film buff, has never commented publicly about his depiction in Team America: World Police, although shortly after its release North Korea asked the Czech Republic to ban the movie. The filmmakers acknowledged this in a DVD extra and jokingly suggested he sing "I'm So Ronery".

Michael Moore is depicted as a fat, hot-dog eating glutton who partakes in suicide bombing and is referred to as a "giant socialist weasel" by the supercomputer. Stone explained the reason for this portrayal in an MSNBC interview:

We have a very specific beef with Michael Moore...I did an interview, and he didn't mischaracterize me or anything I said in Bowling for Columbine. But what he did do was put this cartoon [titled A Brief History of the United States of America, written by Moore, animated and directed by Harold Moss] right after me that made it look like we did that cartoon.

Reception

Team America made $12.1 million in its opening U.S. weekend. The film eventually grossed a total of almost $51 million, with $32.8 million in U.S. domestic receipts and $18.1 in international proceeds.

Reviews of the film were generally positive. It rated a 78% ("fresh") at Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus "Team America will either offend you or leave you in stitches. It'll probably do both." The Metacritic rating is 64/100 ("generally favorable reviews").

Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson was supposed to have met Trey Parker before production, but they cancelled the meeting acknowledging he would not like the film's expletives. Anderson felt "there are good, fun parts [in the film] but the language wasn't to my liking".

National Review Online has named the film #24 in its list of 'The Best Conservative Movies'. Brian C. Anderson wrote, "the film’s utter disgust with air-headed, left-wing celebrity activism remains unmatched in popular culture."

Filmmakers' response

In an interview with Matt Stone following the film's release, Anwar Brett of the BBC asked the following question. "For all the targets you choose to take pot-shots at," he asked, "George W. Bush isn't one of them. How come?" Matt Stone replied, "If you want to see Bush-bashing in America you only have to walk about 10 feet to find it. Trey and I are always attracted to what other people aren't doing. Frankly that wasn't the movie we wanted to make."

In another interview, Parker and Stone further clarified the end of the film which seems to justify the role of the United States as the "World Police".

Because that's the thing that we realized when we were making the movie. It was always the hardest thing. We wanted to deal with this emotion of being hated as an American. That was the thing that was intriguing to us, and having Gary (the main character) deal with that emotion. And so, him becoming ashamed to be a part of Team America and being ashamed of himself, he comes to realize that, just as he got his brother killed by gorillas -- he didn't kill his brother; he was a dick, he wasn't an asshole -- so too does America have this role in the world as a dick. Cops are dicks, you fucking hate cops, but you need 'em.

Music

Marc Shaiman was originally hired to compose the original score and help Trey Parker compose the film's songs. He helped compose "Everyone Has AIDS" and "Derka Derk (Terrorist Theme)". He submitted a score, but the studio rejected it and fired Shaiman, hiring Harry Gregson-Williams as a last minute replacement (Parker had instructed Shaiman to score the film as if it were a typical action movie, which they agreed would make the movie funnier, while the studio felt the score should play up the comedy). In a curious twist, Shaiman later conducted the orchestra in the film's scoring sessions.

The film's songs include:

• "America, Fuck Yeah" Played throughout various parts of the movie, along with the "America, Fuck Yeah Bummer Remix"
• "Freedom Isn't Free": Played when Gary decides to take a "detour" with Baxter, the limo driver. The song concludes with the declaration that freedom in fact costs $1.05 ("a buck oh five"). It is a parody of nationalistic country songs like "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)" by Toby Keith and "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" by Alan Jackson.
• "Derka Derk (Terrorist Theme)", an instrumental parody of "Cantina Band" from Star Wars.
• "Only a Woman": Played during the love scene between Gary and Lisa. A parody of Diane Warren-penned powerballads from Jerry Bruckheimer-produced action movies ("I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" from Armageddon, "How Do I Live" from Con Air, "There You'll Be" from Pearl Harbor.)
• "I'm So Ronery": Sung by Kim Jong-il when he feels everyone else is incompetent.
• "Montage": Sung when Gary is training with Spotswoode. The song is a stylistic parody of "Push It to the Limit" by Paul Engemann, "Hearts on Fire" by John Cafferty (Rocky IV soundtrack), the song even features the line 'even Rocky had a montage', and "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler, songs famed for appearances in '80s films. A slightly different version of the song was featured in the 6th season South Park episode "Asspen."
• "North Korean Medley": Gibberish song used to distract the group of people in Kim Jong-il's large mansion before Alec Baldwin's speech. A parody of North Korean pop music by artists such as the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble and Mansudae Art Troupe, which generally extols the virtues of Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung; Kim Jong-il's name is repeated over and over.
• "The End of an Act": Played after Gary quits Team America and gets drunk. A ballad which poses the question,"Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?" It's a love song featuring the refrain "Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you". This song's lyrics and musical style are parodies of love ballads commonly written for action films that the film satirizes, such as "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith which appeared on the Armageddon soundtrack and "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin which appeared on the Top Gun soundtrack.
• "Everyone Has AIDS", sung by Gary in the Broadway musical Lease (a parody of Rent).
• The song played while the team is debriefing and partying is Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride"
• The song playing when the team walks through Kim Jong-il's palace is Tomoyasu Hotei's "Battle Without Honor or Humanity", which was also featured in Kill Bill.
• There is also a bonus song sung by Kim Jong-il named "You Are Worthress Arec Barwin" during the end credits of the film. The song provides some explanation of the film's ending sequence and Kim's motivation for blowing up the entire world/killing all of humanity.

See also

• List of films set in or about North Korea

References

• Moriarty Visits Matt & Trey On The Team America Set! - set report from AintItCool.com
• Team America: World Police - synopsis, clips and images from LatinoReview.com
• (October 2004). Play: South Park's Puppet Regime. Wired 12.10. Accessed October 6, 2004.
• BBC Interview with Matt Stone

External links

• Official website
• Team America: World Police at AllMovie
• Template:Bcdb
• Team America: World Police at IMDb
• Team America: World Police at Rotten Tomatoes
• Team America: World Police at Box Office Mojo
• An analysis at Flakmagazine
• Roger Ebert's review