Friday Feeling: Team America World Police
Friday, June 6th, 2008There is no ‘I’ in Team America.
No competition this week; Team America: World Police wins hands down. Team America are here to save the world from itself, and destroy the terrorists by any means necessary. If this means laying waste to some of the worlds most famous landmarks, then so be it.
This lovingly created Thunderbirds style spoof takes shots at everyone and everything from the empty pomp of the Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer style movies, the arrogance of Hollywood actors who use their celebrity clout to influence politics, the standpoints of jingoistic conservatives and liberal bleeding-hearts, the so called ‘Axis of Evil’, the ineptitude of the United Nations and the perceived American view of the rest of the world.
Film maker Michael Moore gets a particularly bad roasting, portrayed as an interfering, hot dog chomping ’socialist weasel’, and Alec Baldwin is cast as the leader of an association of liberal screen actors called the Film Actors Guild. The villain of the piece is none other than ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-Il of North Korea, who is controlling an international network of terrorists, who are almost exclusively Islamic fundamentalists who speak in a mock-Arabian dialect (’derka derka, Mohammed jihad!’ etc).
Whenever the film cuts to a new location, the accompanying caption will give the place’s name and its distance from the United States in miles. Famous landmarks in locations such as Cairo and Paris are closely bunched together as if it were a Disneyland version of reality – look closely and you’ll see that the cobbles of the Parisian streets are made up of tiny croissants.
Team America is not for the easily offended. There are over 300 utterances of the word ‘fuck’, and there are graphic scenes of violence and sex, all involving puppets. Team America: World Police is on Channel 4 at 10:00pm tonight.
Kim Jong Il: Hans, Hans, Hans! We’ve been frew this a dozen times. I don’t have any weapons of mass destruction, OK Hans?
Hans Blix: Then let me look around, so I can ease the UN’s collective mind. I’m sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me in, or else.
Kim Jong Il: Or else what?
Hans Blix: Or else we will be very angry with you. And we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.
