Team America: World Police

Friday, October 19 - Saturday, October 20, 2012

35mm print

“The missing – and debatably sarcastic – link between Washington’s special-ops ideal and Gerry Anderson’s prelapsarian Thunderbirds, Team America are a cracked terrorist-fighting task force whose defiance of WMD-toting mullahs tends to leave the likes of Paris and the Pyramids wasted anyway. Trey Parker and his South Park accomplice Matt Stone sift through this ostensible contradiction in the accompanying rock anthem ‘America: Fuck Yeah!’

“More candid than the sniggering schoolboy politics is Parker’s justifiable pride in how his painstaking (and often painstakingly crude) puppetry shows up the human performers in live-action Jerry Bruckheimer-style jingoist extravaganzas, as elaborated in the serenade ‘I Miss You (And ‘Pearl Harbor’ Sucked)’. Team America recruit a Broadway heartthrob to infiltrate the evil-doers, and discover a fifth column of hand-wringing Hollywood liberals in league with North Korea’s crazed leader Kim Jong II.

“Better sustained than the ‘South Park’ movie, ‘Team America’ delivers both spot-on movie deconstruction and gleeful destruction. It also teaches that there are different levels of piss-taking. The film might send up American war-mongers’ cartoonish world-view – a world of ‘dicks, pussies and assholes’ – but the joke’s still on the pussies.” – Time Out (London)

• Country USA
• Rating NC-17
• Year 2004
• Running Time 98 minutes
• Director Trey Parker

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.