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"What are you rebelling against, Johnny?"

"Whaddya got?"

-- Marlon Brando in "The Wild One"

If this dialogue is not inscribed over the doors of Trey Parker and Matt Stone , it should be. Their "Team America: World Police" is an equal opportunity offender, and waves of unease will flow over first one segment of their audience, and then another. Like a cocky teenager who's had a couple of drinks before the party, they don't have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible.

Their strategy extends even to their decision to use puppets for all of their characters, a choice that will not be universally applauded. Their characters, one-third lifesize, are clearly artificial, and yet there's something going on around the mouths and lips that looks halfway real, as if they were inhabited by the big faces with moving mouths from the Conan O'Brien show. There are times when the characters risk falling into the Uncanny Valley, that rift used by robot designers to describe robots that alarm us by looking too humanoid.

The plot seems like a collision at the screenplay factory between several half-baked world-in-crisis movies. Team America, a group not unlike the Thunderbirds, bases its rockets, jets and helicopters inside Mount Rushmore, which is hollow, and race off to battle terrorism wherever it is suspected. In the opening sequence, they swoop down on Paris and fire on caricatures of Middle East desperadoes, missing most of them but managing to destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre.

Regrouping, the team's leader, Spottswoode (voice by Daran Norris) recruits a Broadway actor named Gary to go undercover for them. When first seen, Gary (voice by Parker) is starring in the musical "Lease," and singing "Everyone has AIDS." Ho, ho. Spottswoode tells Gary: "You're an actor with a double major in theater and world languages! Hell, you're the perfect weapon!" There's a big laugh when Gary is told that, if captured, he may want to kill himself and is supplied with a suicide device I will not reveal.

Spottswoode's plan: Terrorists are known to be planning to meet at "a bar in Cairo." The Team America helicopter will land in Cairo, and four uniformed team members will escort Gary, his face crudely altered to look "Middle Eastern," to the bar, where he will go inside and ask whazzup. As a satire on our inability to infiltrate other cultures, this will do, I suppose. It leads to an ill-advised adventure where in the name of fighting terrorism, Team America destroys the Pyramids and the Sphinx. But it turns out the real threat comes from North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Il (voice also by Parker), who plans to unleash "9/11 times 2,356."

Opposing Team America is the Film Actors' Guild, or F.A.G., ho, ho, with puppets representing Alec Baldwin , Tim Robbins , Matt Damon , Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn (who has written an angry letter to Parker and Stone about their comments, in Rolling Stone, that there is “no shame” in not voting). No real point is made about the actors' activism; they exist in the movie essentially to be ridiculed for existing at all, I guess. Hans Blix, the U.N. chief weapons inspector, also turns up, and has a fruitless encounter with the North Korean dictator. Some of the scenes are set to music, including such tunes as "Pearl Harbor Sucked and I Miss You" and "America -- F***, Yeah!"

If I were asked to extract a political position from the movie, I'd be baffled. It is neither for nor against the war on terrorism, just dedicated to ridiculing those who wage it and those who oppose it. The White House gets a free pass, since the movie seems to think Team America makes its own policies without political direction.

I wasn't offended by the movie's content so much as by its nihilism. At a time when the world is in crisis and the country faces an important election, the response of Parker, Stone and company is to sneer at both sides -- indeed, at anyone who takes the current world situation seriously. They may be right that some of us are puppets, but they're wrong that all of us are fools, and dead wrong that it doesn't matter.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Team America: World Police (2004)

Rated R for graphic, crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language, all involving puppets

Directed by

• Trey Parker

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Team America: World Police

Popular Broadway actor Gary Johnston is recruited by the elite counter-terrorism organization Team America: World Police. As the world begins to crumble around him, he must battle with terro... Read all Popular Broadway actor Gary Johnston is recruited by the elite counter-terrorism organization Team America: World Police. As the world begins to crumble around him, he must battle with terrorists, celebrities and falling in love. Popular Broadway actor Gary Johnston is recruited by the elite counter-terrorism organization Team America: World Police. As the world begins to crumble around him, he must battle with terrorists, celebrities and falling in love.

• Trey Parker
• 757 User reviews
• 208 Critic reviews
• 64 Metascore
• 1 win & 11 nominations

• Gary Johnston

• (uncredited)

• (as Masasa)

• Spottswoode

• I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E.

• Alec Baldwin
• French Mother

• Jean Francois

• Samuel L. Jackson

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The very first footage screened for Paramount executives was of a poorly crafted puppet in front of a background of a badly drawn Eiffel Tower, prompting one executive in the audience to yell, "Oh God, they fucked us!" This was a prank pulled by the directors and the shot then pulls back to reveal a highly refined marionette manipulating the inferior one, then flies over beautifully detailed Parisian landscape full of believable yet cheesy marionettes. This actually ended up being the opening shot of the movie.
• Goofs When Gary enters the tavern with the blue door in Cairo we see two hands holding and moving a band member.

[repeated line]

Matt Damon : Matt Damon.

• Crazy credits "Alec Baldwin, Hans Blix, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Janeane Garofalo, Danny Glover, Ethan Hawke, Helen Hunt, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Jennings, Kim Jong Il, Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, and Liv Tyler did not authorize the use of their names or contribute any performances to this motion picture."
• An alternate take of the scene where Joe and Gary go over the distress signal outside the tavern. As Gary walks away, Joe tells him that he thinks Lisa has feelings for him (Gary).
• A deleted section when Gary quits the team. First Spottswoode apologizes for letting racism cloud his judgment in Cairo. He says racism convinced him the terrorists must be middle eastern. He then uses a slur to describe Kim Jong Il and vows never to be racist again. He then expresses his hatred for Winnie the Pooh to Gary, as he (Spottswoode) believes "that c***sucking bear killed Jack Kennedy."
• The full fight between Gary and the guards in Kim Jong's main entrance hall, that is only implied in the final cut.
• In the North Korean prison, Chris, Joe and Sarah get into an argument with Martin Sheen and Tim Robbins over who the puppets really are.
• A deleted scene/outtake with Trey Parker doing Spotteswoode's voice. After Gary proves he can be trusted, Spotteswoode calls him gay, causing Parker and the crew to break out laughing.
• A brief deleted scene of a WMD going off in "Anytown, USA."
• A deleted portion of the F.A.G. meeting where Ben Affleck, sitting next to Meryl Streep and played by a crew member's hand with the arm dressed up, going on a rant about political "interbreeding" and needing to be taken more "seriouslyer."
• A deleted British Newscast that takes place after the Cairo mission. The newscaster announces some world leaders are pissed off at Team America, and it cuts to quick interviews with the French and Egyptian leaders.
• A deleted scene in which Michael Moore announces he is making an anti-Team America documentary. He gets a passerby at Mount Rushmore to look into the camera and say that "Team America killed my mother" and "Team America ate my baby."
• Connections Featured in Last Laugh '04 (2004)
• Soundtracks Magic Carpet Ride Written by Rushton Moreve (as Rushton John Moreve) and John Kay Performed by Steppenwolf Courtesy of MCA Records under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 757

• DebraIonaVogel
• Sep 17, 2021
• What are the differences between the R-Rated theatrical version and the Unrated version of the movie?
• October 15, 2004 (United States)
• United States
• American Heroes
• Culver City, California, USA
• Paramount Pictures
• Scott Rudin Productions
• MMDP Munich Movie Development & Production GmbH & Co. Project KG
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $32,000,000 (estimated)
• $32,786,074
• $12,120,358
• Oct 17, 2004
• $50,826,898

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 38 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Team America: World Police Reviews

Team America: World Police has South Park evil geniuses Trey Parker and Matt Stone doing what they do best: savagely making fun of big-game targets while burning every bridge around them

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 21, 2023

For grown-ups, this is righteous, riotous immaturity at its most gratifying.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 21, 2023

What’s surprising is some of its best material isn’t even humor – it’s the darkness that seeps in with the characters and the story.

Full Review | Jun 25, 2022

Yet another unique but entertaining film from the world of Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 25, 2020

Trey and Stone's gleefully vicious, staggeringly non-PC attacks on America's right, left and center makes Team America an utterly outrageous delight.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 23, 2019

When it comes to politics, the South Park boys mistake contempt for humor.

Full Review | May 17, 2018

The whole thing plays like Thunderbirds Goes to Hell and will doubtless offend all those numskulls who complained about the BBC's transmission of Jerry Springer: The Opera. For that alone, it gets my vote.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2015

The jarhead action, intentionally crappy parody songs, mélange of terrorist gibberish and semi-sensible anatomical analogies for foreign policy all let "Team America" rowdily resurrect the Zucker Brothers' spirit of peerless, puerile genre satire.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 23, 2010

Raunchy action comedy from South Park team isn't for kids.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2010

Putting the fun back into misanthrope

Full Review | Original Score: 77/100 | Jul 22, 2009

When it's not beating us over the head with "clever political satire", it can be a fun film.

Full Review | Apr 29, 2009

Geniuses of satire Matt Stone and Trey Parker bring more laughs to the big screen after their wildly funny 1999 movie "South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut" with a cast of square-jawed marionettes fighting terror by way of North Korea's Kim Jong II in a re

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Apr 18, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 27, 2007

As usual, heart and soul have been poured into an enterprise that Parker and Stone want you to think they just knocked off after a night of smoking weed.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 23, 2007

...hurt by Parker and Stone's reliance on speechifying and heavy-handed diatribes...

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 6, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Bottom line: nice puppetry, crappy movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 11, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 6, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

The film's heroes ... move through the world convinced they are doing good; they don't even notice that they've leveled Paris in the process of defending it ...

Full Review | Sep 16, 2005

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Team america: world police, common sense media reviewers.

Raunchy action comedy from South Park team isn't for kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Sure, it's a parody, but absolutely nothing is sac

In this movie, leaders can't be trusted, and those

Gory and explicit puppet violence. Within the firs

The characters may be puppets, but in a few intens

Frequent use of very graphic language, including "

Many Coca-Cola billboards, Morgan Stanley billboar

Boswell always has a drink in hand, and he smokes.

Parents need to that although kids who watch South Park might be intrigued by this raunchy, over-the-top puppet action comedy from the show's creators, it's absolutely not age-appropriate for young viewers. The fact that all of the characters are marionettes -- and that all of the situations are played for…

Positive Messages

Sure, it's a parody, but absolutely nothing is sacred in this movie. Arabs are characterized as terrorists who have WMDs, Gary is in musical called Lease (a parody of Rent ) which features a song about everybody having AIDS, and stereotyping goes to extremes.

Positive Role Models

In this movie, leaders can't be trusted, and those speaking for peace are actually agents of destruction. Lots of stereotyping and mocking humor.

Violence & Scariness

Gory and explicit puppet violence. Within the first five minutes, half of Paris is destroyed, while marionette people (including civilians) are gunned down with machine guns and bazookas; this theme continues throughout the movie. Characters are killed point blank and tortured, body parts go flying in explosions, there are numerous instances of decapitation, and someone is set on fire. An actor falls from a great heights and lands in an explosion of blood. Many threats of painful and explicit abusive acts. One male character forces another male character into a sexual encounter not because they're homosexual but as an expression of power.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The characters may be puppets, but in a few intense sexual scenes, nothing is left to the imagination. There are naked puppet bodies, explicit sex acts and references, bodily fluids, etc. The unrated version includes even more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent use of very graphic language, including "c--k," "c--ksucker," "c--t," "f--k," "f---er," "motherf---er," "p---y," "s--t," "t-ts," "ass," "a--hole," "balls," "bastard," "bitch," "butt," " damn," "dammit," "goddamn," "hell," "jerk," "piss," "crap," "slut," "whore," "ho," and more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Many Coca-Cola billboards, Morgan Stanley billboard, Levi's logo, Jose Cuervo, Tanqueray, Grey Goose vodka.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Boswell always has a drink in hand, and he smokes. Characters celebrate with mixed cocktails. Gary get so drunk that he vomits violently over and over and over again, until he's lying in a pool of barf.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to that although kids who watch South Park might be intrigued by this raunchy, over-the-top puppet action comedy from the show's creators, it's absolutely not age-appropriate for young viewers. The fact that all of the characters are marionettes -- and that all of the situations are played for comedy -- doesn't change the fact that the graphic violence and sex scenes are meant for adults only. Characters are shot, blown up, decapitated, sliced in half, and burned; in the sex scenes, they're shown fully naked engaged in very explicit acts. Plus, the language is vulgar to the extreme, there's drinking and smoking, and a fair bit of the humor relies on jokes that could be considered homophobic (for example, an organization based on the Screen Actors Guild is called the Film Actors Guild so it can have the initials F.A.G.). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (15)
• Kids say (46)

Based on 15 parent reviews

Great parody!

Lots of swearing.

it depends if you're kid is allowed to hear swearing but if you're kid can hear swearing then they should be able to watch it now but keep in mind there's a lot of sexual humour, foul language and violence but the violence isn't realistic

What's the Story?

Inspired by Thunderbirds , a 1960s British children's TV show, TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE follows the adventures of five all-American, good-looking heroes who are masters of everything from kick-boxing to rocket science and can toss off brave wisecracks while gunning down evil-doers. Their cool clubhouse inside Mount Rushmore has every kind of transportation and weapon system, as well as a swinging cocktail lounge. When one of the team is killed, team leader Spottswoode recruits an actor. Gary, star of the hit Broadway musical Lease (with the showstopping final number "Everyone Has AIDS!"), is brought on board because, apparently, the most important skill for fighting terrorism is acting ability. At first Gary says no, but there's something about saving the world -- or maybe just something about team member Lisa -- that makes him change his mind. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Il is plotting total world domination, and a bunch of Hollywood celebrities think they have the solution for world peace.

Is It Any Good?

South Park 's creators have made a fabulously intricate puppet world here, with replicas of iconic monuments from Mount Rushmore and the Sphinx to the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal. And the duo takes such pleasure in being naughty that it makes their work more silly than smutty. In their best work, the outrageousness is in aid of a statement, a sharp attack, so that the four-letter words and cheerful bad taste transcend their schoolyard shock value to work as satire. But when there's no special point of view and they just decide to bash everyone on all sides, it runs out of steam quickly.

This latest venture would have made a hilarious 15-minute short, but at feature length it gets repetitive and tiresome. When the movie is good, it's very funny. But Stone and Parker go after everyone here -- people who want to fight terrorists, people who don't want to fight terrorists, people who are terrorists, and people who just have really, really inflated senses of their importance in the world. And so the satire is too scattershot to sustain the film.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what point the film is trying to make. Who is it really mocking? What are the filmmakers saying about celebrities who speak out on politics?

Would the impact of the movie's sex scenes and violent sequences be different if it was live action rather than animated with marionettes? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 15, 2004
• On DVD or streaming : May 17, 2005
• Cast : Kristen Miller , Matt Stone , Trey Parker
• Director : Trey Parker
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Comedy
• Run time : 95 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : graphic, crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language; all involving puppets
• Last updated : December 31, 2023

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‘team america: world police’: thr’s 2004 review.

On Oct. 15, 2004, Paramount unleashed Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Team America: World Police in theaters, where it would gross $50 million globally. The Hollywood Reporter‘s original review is below. Team America: World Police is to political commentary what lap dancing is to ballet. There is no room for subtlety. Aiming a rude, foul-mouthed political […]

By Kirk Honeycutt

Kirk Honeycutt

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On Oct. 15, 2004, Paramount unleashed Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Team America: World Police in theaters, where it would gross $50 million globally. The Hollywood Reporter ‘s original review is below.

Team America: World Police  is to political commentary what lap dancing is to ballet. There is no room for subtlety. Aiming a rude, foul-mouthed political satire everywhere — left, right and center — Trey Parker and Matt Stone blow up a good deal of the world, not to mention the egos of many Hollywood personalities in Team America . Unlike their South Park  TV series and one hilarious movie, which used crudely animated kids to deliver comical punch, Team America  tackles a world of terrorists, pacifist actors and WMDs with marionettes.

Related Stories

'deadwood': thr's 2004 review, 'family guy': thr's 1999 review.

Like those cut-out cartoon characters, however, these wooden puppets are deliberately primitive: They have little facial expression, move awkwardly and let their strings show. But, you’ll be happy to know, they can vomit in torrents of green puke. With this film, Parker and Stone should plug into their young fan base again, so box office business will be brisk. Ancillary markets look strong, too.

But some of us who delight in South Park , where the humor was more social than political, may wonder if the lads have strayed into territory where they are less at home. The film is only intermittently funny and truly does raise a question of how often can one resort to the same foul words for laughs without becoming tiresome.

The film starts off with promise. In a fairy-tale set of Paris — where the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre and Opera House all crowd the same city square — a team of gung-ho All-American fighters destroys much of Paris in the process of rescuing the city from Arab terrorists. When one of the superheroes — leader Spottswoode (Daran Norris) — is killed, it must recruit a new hero.

He settles on Gary (Parker), a Broadway actor starring in a musical about AIDS called “Lease.” A double major in college in acting and world languages, Gary is asked to “act” like a terrorist so he might infiltrate the international conspiracy. (These languages are all nonsense languages that Danny Kaye might have invented, albeit with greater imagination.)

Gary’s comrades in high-tech arms are Sarah (Masasa), a clairvoyant with eyes for the new guy; Joe (Parker again), an all-star quarterback who never seems to get the girl; Lisa (Kristen Miller), a psychologist who also has eyes for the new guy; and Chris (Stone), a martial arts expert who hates actors. The movie takes off on a James Bond-like scenario that finds the gang jetting from Cairo to Panama, New York, North Korea and Mount Rushmore (where Team America headquarters deep inside the mountain).

The team’s greatest opposition comes not from an international community weary of America’s go-it-alone arrogance, but leaders of the Film Actors Guild, or FAG, that consists of puppets meant to represent Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon and Martin Sheen, among others. There are also puppets for news anchor Peter Jennings, U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Kim Jong Il (another Parker voice), who is rendered in oversized Mr. McGoo glasses, a gift for American obscenities and a psychopathic personality.

Songs are, of course, a trademark of Parker and Stone. Living up (down?) to expectations, much of them here consist of scatological lyrics and an uncomplimentary attitude toward Hollywood personalities. One particular lyric goes: “I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark in Pearl Harbor .”

Inspired episodes do crop up, like the one in which our heroes discuss their feelings toward one another — romantic and otherwise — while engaging the North Korean air force in combat. The sex scene, which nearly cost Paramount an NC-17 rating, has been trimmed, but the positions of the coupling puppets remain varied. The violence is graphic, with a wooden puppet devoured by a shark while others get torn apart by bullets and vicious cats.

Much of this is in fun and not to be taken too seriously. (Can someone check: Is Alec Baldwin laughing yet?) But the film all too quickly settles into a stultifying sameness. Gags get repeated endlessly, the same puppet poses are struck over and over, and the crudest material is often the lamest.

The sets by designer Jim Dultz and visual consultant David Rockwell are beauties in miniature that cinematographer Bill Pope lights extraordinarily well. And credit Karen Patch for creating a tiny wardrobe and accessories for the cast of hundreds that are always visually striking. Harry Gregson-Williams contributes a very James Bond-like score. — Kirk Honeycutt, originally published on Oct. 11, 2004

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Team America: World Police

Team America: World Police

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Why stop at calling Team America: World Police outrageously, gut-bustingly hilarious? It’s also a ruthlessly clever musical, a punchy political parody and the hottest look ever at naked puppets — the first film, porn included, in which a woody is actually made of wood. Those South Park mischief-makers — director Trey Parker and co-screenwriter Matt Stone — have produced their own Jerry Bruckheimer epic (think Armageddon and Pearl Harbor ) using Chiodo brothers string puppets instead of Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. And for all the frat-boy humor, the film (shot by Matrix master Bill Pope) is a visual knockout, with design and costumes getting as many laughs as the script.p>he sex has been tamped down (no puppet golden shower until the DVD) for the sake of an R rating, but the jokes come hard and fast enough to obliterate the limp ones. The six members of Team America are hellbent on destroying terror, even as they obliviously wipe out world monuments. When one puppet dies in battle, TA boss Spottswoode recruits Gary, a double major in world languages and theater. Even though Spottswoode tests Gary by asking him to suck his dick, Gary gets in touch with his inner hero and leaves his ring role in Broadway’s Lease , a Rent rip-off in which he sings, “Everyone has AIDS/Whites have it and spades do too.” The songs, as in South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut , are get-the-soundtrack-now uproarious, be it a country riff (“Freedom isn’t free/There’s a hefty fuckin’ fee”), a hard-rock anthem (“America — Fuck, Yeah”) or a power ballad (“ Pearl Harbor sucked/Just a little bit more than I love you”). Still, it’s North Korean dictator Kim Jong II, the film’s scene-stealing villain, who stops the show with “I’m Ronely.” Parker, who does the voices of Kim and Gary, among others, is a vocal wonder.p>olitical wonks think that Team America outs Parker and Stone as closet righties. Though no mention is made of Bush or Kerry, the film targets a clear and present danger: liberal Hollywood. Janeane Garofalo pisses off the boys for going on TV to parrot what she’s read in the papers. So they turn her into a puppet and blow her head clean off. Sweet. One actor gets his own tribute song (“You Are Worthless, Alec Baldwin”), and Michael Moore, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Tim Robbins and (most ungallantly) Susan Sarandon are royally skewered. But only for the high crime of taking themselves seriously. Parker and Stone are too smart to ever make that mistake. Screw critics who urge them to mature. Does America need these we-won’t-grow-up outlaws to keep sticking it to the system? Fuck, yeah.

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• DVD & Streaming

Team America: World Police

• Action/Adventure , Animation , Comedy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• voices of Trey Parker as Gary Johnston/Joe/Hans Blix/Kim Jong Il and others; Matt Stone as Chris and others; Kristen Miller as Lisa; Masasa as Sarah; Daran Norris as Spottswoode; Maurice LaMarche as Alec Baldwin

Home Release Date

• Trey Parker

Distributor

• Paramount Pictures

Movie Review

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were inspired to make Team America: World Police using marionettes by 1960s TV shows such as Thunderbirds . They set their satiric sights on Jerry Bruckheimer-type blow-up-everything-in-sight movies (one song mocks the movie Pearl Harbor ) and fatuous Hollywood types who think celebrity automatically confers wisdom. Good targets, surely, but they deserved to be skewered with the rapier wit of a Jonathan Swift or Lewis Carroll. Parker and Stone settled for a sledgehammer.

As the marionette world reels from terrorist attacks, only one force can save mankind from chaos—Team America, a supersecret organization whose headquarters are secreted within Mount Rushmore. The team consists of the older mentor, Spottswoode; the corn-fed all-American hero, Joe; the shoot-first-ask-questions-later hotshot, Chris; Lisa, a psychic whose empathic skills allow her to discern only the blazingly obvious; and Sarah, the hypercompetent female who is still mourning the loss of her fiancé on a previous mission.

The team is able to foil a plot in Paris, but they destroy the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre in the process. Team America must find a way to infiltrate the terrorist organization to prevent further mayhem. How to do it?

Spottswoode, the team’s leader, sets out to find the perfect man for the dangerous job. Is he a young Special Forces adrenaline junkie? A cold war-era superspy? No, he’s Gary Johnston, a very talented … actor. Joining the elite team, Gary is made up to impersonate an Arab terrorist, but he chokes on his first mission, and the archeological treasures of Egypt bite the dust as yet another another mission goes awry.

Finally, the team figures out that the mastermind behind all world terrorism is none other than North Korea’s “Kim Jong Il,” portrayed here as a petulant man-child with too much time on his hands. As Team America formulates a plan to infiltrate Kim’s headquarters, they run into a further complication: a group of naïve Hollywood celebrities, led by actor “Alec Baldwin,” is on its way to North Korea for a peace conference.

Will Gary be able to use his acting skills to bring down the North Korean puppet master? Can Alec Baldwin out-act him? Will any more famous landmarks fall victim to Team America’s incompetence?

Positive Elements

Spiritual elements.

One team member is allegedly psychic. When someone asks what will happen if a terrorist plot succeeds, he’s told, “Basically, all the worst parts of the Bible.”

Sexual Content

This movie is perverse in the extreme. An extended scene of puppet sex features explicit sexual sounds, motions and positions. Viewers are assaulted throughout the film by harsh and obscene slang for sexual and excretory organs, and jokes about oral and anal sex. The act isn’t shown, but much is made of Gary “servicing” Spottswoode. Wanting to punish himself for blowing a mission, Gary proposes drilling holes in his penis.

The theme song of the movie’s Broadway musical, Lease (a send-up of the Tony Award-winning Rent ), is “Everyone Has AIDS.” A billboard features a scantily clad (non-puppet) bikini model.

Violent Content

Never mind that all the characters are puppets. We still see bloody bullet holes appear in bodies, heads blown off and bodies cut in half. A terrorist is mowed down by a Hummer. The Panama Canal gets blown up, and we see dead “people” floating in the aftermath. Errant missiles—i.e., every missile Team America fires—blow up architectural, artistic and archeological treasures.

“Michael Moore” destroys the Team America headquarters as a suicide bomber, and large blobs of real fat are seen dripping from the ruins. “Hans Blix” is dumped into a shark tank à la James Bond, except there’s no escape for Hans. We see real sharks dismember his body; in a later scene, we see his skeleton floating in the water, still clutching his briefcase.

“Tim Robbins,” a peace activist, is set on fire. Two other peace activists are set upon by “panthers” (black housecats in reality); the filmmakers apparently stuffed the puppets with meat of some sort, because we see the cats ripping away at the bloody, dismembered bodies. Various jets and rocket aircraft are shot down or blown out of the sky, crashing in flames.

Crude or Profane Language

As would be expected from a movie written by the guys who made South Park, Team America is perforated with profanities and obscenities. I gave up counting f-words halfway through the movie; the final tally has to be in the 100s. (Even the Team America theme song uses the f-word.) Ribald scatological terms abound. And the s-word and tons of milder crudities join in to lend their particular voices to what becomes something of a vulgar symphony. God’s and Jesus’ names are abused repeatedly.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Spottswoode always has a lit cigarette in his hand. One scene is set in a bar, where Gary drowns his sorrows. He leaves a half-drunk beer on the bar and staggers out into the alley …

Other Negative Elements

… Whereupon he vomits—not once, not twice, but three times, followed by violent projectile vomiting. The scene ends with him unconscious in a huge pool of vomit.

The Hollywood peace activists belong to the “Film Actors Guild,” which allows the filmmakers to put F.A.G. after their names every time they appear. The film mocks Koreans’ difficulty pronouncing the letter “L,” giving Kim Jong Il dialogue that frequently uses that letter and having him sing “I’m So Ronery (Lonely).”

Trailers for Team America began with the tagline, “George Clooney, Janeane Garofalo, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Kim Jong Il … will all HATE this movie!” Naturally, the filmmakers did not have the permission of any of these celebrities and politicians to use their names or images. (Bush and Kerry do not appear onscreen.) To sue them, however, would only play into their hands, and the plaintiffs would probably lose anyway, as courts have repeatedly ruled that satire, no matter how wicked, is protected by the First Amendment.

This devil-may-care attitude is symptomatic of Parker and Stone’s style. And they ran so far with it this time that their film originally received an NC-17 rating. Supposedly they made cuts to get it down to an R, but there’s so much foul content remaining that it’s hard to tell where. Regarding the edited sex scene, the ever-irreverent Parker tweaked the MPAA by saying, “I think it’s a beautiful scene about lovemaking. Apparently, the MPAA can’t handle that much love.” Trust me, “love” had nothing to do with that scene—even after it was reduced.

Content issues don’t bother very many film critics, though, and most give Team America rave reviews. Anything so irreverent that skewers so many sacred cows is bound to be popular with reviewers. “A post-9/11 gutbuster,” gushed one. “A delightfully vicious film,” penned another. Peter Travers, writing in Rolling Stone, said that such a movie is needed in “an era when boat-rocking is deemed unpatriotic. Boy, do we need it now.”

But this movie has much less to do with rocking boats than it has to do with insulting as many people as possible, and such ham-handed satire gives legitimate satire a bad name. Team America could have been a very funny movie, but Parker and Stone have no respect for anything or anyone. Thus, without sharply honed reasoning skills or any obvious understanding of concepts such as honor and courage, the only tool they have left is a bludgeon. And being bludgeoned is never funny.

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Team America: World Police Review

14 Jan 2005

Team America: World Police

The Thunderbirds' live-action adaptation missed the point so dispiritingly that there's a sense of justice served as South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone use Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation methods with wit, affection and a surprising degree of background subtlety in this mock action movie-cum-political cartoon. That's matched, though, by plenty of upfront piss-everybody-off blatancy.

The main target is the Bruckheimer-Simpson style of big action blockbuster with covert gay content. There's a whole song about how the hero misses the heroine "as much as Michael Bay missed the mark with Pearl Harbor", and the back stories everyone gives to explain their prejudices are spot-on - like the T.A. member who's hated actors ever since he was raped by the touring cast of Cats.

It opens with a demonstration of Bush II-era foreign policy, as the elite, patriotic Team America (theme tune: America, Fuck Yeah!) take out would-be bombers in Paris, incidentally destroying the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre. Working out of a base hidden in Mount Rushmore, T.A. flies off to trouble spots, while dealing with its own soap operatic tangle about who "has feelings" for who - which results in the hilarious puppet sex scene that caused a US ratings fuss. After a while, the film leaves off bashing the hawks to go on a tear about Hollywood liberals - with "socialist weasel" Michael Moore depicted as a gross suicide bomber.

Despite good spot gags, Team America falters when it goes over old material: the treatment of the North Korean dictator isn't as sharp as that of Saddam in the South Park movie. The attacks on celebs flounder, in that too many targets (Janeane Garofalo? Helen Hunt?) are hauled on and blasted too quickly for satiric personalities to be established. And the South Park claim that all voices are impersonated "...poorly" rebounds, as some of the caricatures need to be labelled in order to be recognised - and still aren't especially amusing. It makes for a patchy comedy that's stronger as a genre-mocker than a political satire. But you have to love the use of unthreatening pussycats as "deadly panthers" to menace the miniature heroes...

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Team America: World Police review

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This is it. South Park's extremo super-satirists Trey Parker and Matt Stone have finally gone for the big one: skewering the US war on terror - - with puppets! The promise is all in the title and at the blast-off, Team America doesn't renege. The jingoistic battle-anthem blares (""America! Fuck, yeah!""), the slo-mo violence splatters and Team America's gung-ho marionettes nail action-movie cliché to post-9/11 politics with scary pertinence. It's Bruckheimer meets Bush. It's dead on target. Blasting their way through jihad-crazy Arabs, our wibbly-wobbly freedom fighters incidentally blow up the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Hey, it's a small price to pay for, er, saving them. With Matrix DoP Bill Pope lensing the ingenious carnage, be prepared to see puppets (voiced largely by Parker and Stone) swear, fight, puke and fuck to the max. This is Parker and Stone's humour at its best - - a combustible cocktail of icky gross-out, puerile slapstick, subtle in-jokeand razor satire.

The surprise comes when Team starts torching liberals even more violently than starch-collared conservatives. Suicide bomber Michael Moore boulders up with a hot dog in each fist and the movie rapidly shifts aim to tear into the Hollywood celeb-crusaders of Alec Baldwin's Film Actors Guild (arf, arf!). But when you're lobbing apples in both directions, it's hard to shoot straight. And despite boiling geopolitics down to a hilarious life-lesson about "dicks, pussies and assholes", Team America's foggy focus means that, once the gunsmoke clears, it's saying very little. Inspired scenes - - `giant' cats attacking the puppets; power-ballad training (`You need a montage...') - still emerge from a lot of obvious gagging, but incisive irony gradually fades into throwaway crudity.

Interesting to note that with Kim Jong Il stepping in for Bush/al-Qaeda, no US politicians appear. Nor, indeed, does anyone who could hurt the movie. So did they bottle it? Are they confused? Nihilistic? Parker and Stone might be the puppetmasters, but they blow their chance to show who really pulls the strings.

Team America lock'n'loads some of the funniest - and smartest - scenes of the year, but finally leaves us dangling like its unstrung heroes.

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine. 

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"he’s completely unconscious": the mummy director recalls brendan fraser's dangerous real-life stunt on 1999 action movie, jason statham's career success makes perfect sense if you know his background, an extremely rude and crude satire of action movies and our post 9/11 world that is effective and sometimes funny, but uneven overall..

Team America is most certainly not for everyone... it's rude, crude and foul. It definitely earns it's R rating due to dialogue and a puppet love scene that will leave you blinking hard to make sure your eyes are really conveying to your brain what it thinks it's seeing. If explicit and foul language offend you, do not go see this film, as you will not be amused.

The premise is that America has a special police force that does not recognize international boundaries when it comes to going after terrorists. The film opens with a typical day in downtown Paris (3,628 miles from America, the center of the universe), when suddenly a bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists are seen milling about, one of which is carrying a briefcase with a blinking light. There's no subtlety here: Although the terrorists are in Paris, they are wearing the typical desert-type clothes we've come to associate with them, and they look as dirty and scruffy as they would holed up in the mountains of Afghanistan.

In flies "Team America" by helicopter, with members being lowered to the ground and firing from the sky. What looks like a Humvee is deployed from the chopper once it lands, tearing around the streets after the terrorists and wreaking it's own brand of havoc by demolishing fruit stands and causing civilians to dive out of it's way. Gunbattle ensues, with one member of the team firing a rocket which hits the Eiffel Tower, knocking it over and into the Arc de Triomphe... demolishing them both. The reaction of said team member? "Damn, I missed."

The leader of Team America determines that a worldwide coordinated terrorist attack is coming soon, that will be the equivalent of 100 9/11s. Don't ask me how they manage to make jokes about this without seeming disrespectful, but they pull it off. It's determined that an actor is needed to infiltrate a terrorist cell because only an actor could pull this off. They find Gary Johnston, a Broadway actor who can make the audience cry because he can tap into his own "personal pain."

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have managed to insert just about every action movie cliche you've ever seen into this movie. After watching this you'll probably never be able to watch another action movie with a straight face when one of those scenes inevitably shows up. There is the one character who will not accept the "new guy" until he's proven himself, there are relationship conflicts in the team since it's made up of both men and women, there's the level-headed guy, the girl who is not quite as attractive as the blue-eyed blonde, etc., etc.

Of course the parody of action films goes way beyond the team dynamics to action sequences, music, camera shots, and on and on. It's really quite amazing to see what they accomplished with all hand built sets and string puppets in this era of CGI.

The thing I liked about this movie is that no one was spared in the lampoon department. The film starts out apparantly slamming the current U.S. administration, showing Team America doing as much damage in their pursuit of terrorists as the terrorists would have caused themselves, and being oblivious to this fact. What I found surprising was that as the movie went on, the Left seemed to be on the receiving end of most of the humor.

Of course maybe my particular leaning is what leads me to that conclusion, but I found it interesting (and I have to admit, satisfying) to see representations of a number of outspoken Liberal actors and actresses depicted as hypocrites that came to no good end. For example Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and others take the side of Kim Jong Il of North Korea who is hosting a worldwide peace conference while actually planning the aforementioned worldwide terrorist attack. Although they are adamant about abolishing violence, they have no problem going after Team America with machine guns in order to stop them .

Also, Hans Blix puts in an appearance telling the Korean dictator that he must allow him to inspect his palace, or else. "Or else what?" says Kim Jong Il. "Or else the U.N. will be very, very angry and will write you a letter saying so."

I almost fell out of my seat on that one.

Considering that I recently read that Trey and Matt lean to the Left, I was really surprised to see how these folks (and Michael Moore) were skewered in this movie.

To wrap things up, they came up with the most outrageous analogy that I could ever dream of to describe Conservatives, Liberals, and Dictators/Terrorists and their relationships to one another. Let's just say that it's outrageous enough that I won't allow myself to repeat it here.

I can see why Team America: World Police is not dominating at the box office. Although it has it's moments, it's not consistently funny. I laughed out loud here and there, chuckled at other moments, but there were many times where the jokes just didn't cut it, and a lot of the dialogue and situations were so crude or gross that I really didn't find them funny at all. Overall however, it does hit the mark making fun of the action movie genre and maybe making us think a little bit "outside the box" of our own particular political ideologies.

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Team america: world police.

Directed by Trey Parker

Freedom Hangs By A Thread

Team America World Police follows an international police force dedicated to maintaining global stability. Learning that dictator Kim Jong il is out to destroy the world, the team recruits Broadway star Gary Johnston to go undercover. With the help of Team America, Gary manages to uncover the plan to destroy the world. Will Team America be able to save it in time? It stars… Samuel L Jackson, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Helen Hunt, Matt Damon, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney, Danny Glover, Ethan Hawke, Alec Baldwin… or does it?

Trey Parker Matt Stone Kristen Miller Chelsea Marguerite Masasa Moyo Daran Norris Fred Tatasciore Phil Hendrie Jeremy Shada Maurice LaMarche

Director Director

Trey Parker

Producers Producers

Julie M. Anderson Trey Parker Matt Stone Frank C. Agnone II Pam Brady Michael Polaire Scott Rudin

Writers Writers

Matt Stone Pam Brady Trey Parker

Casting Casting

Mary Hidalgo

Cinematography Cinematography

Executive producers exec. producers.

Scott Aversano Anne Garefino

Art Direction Art Direction

Ramsey Avery Thomas Valentine John Berger

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Richard C. Walker

Composer Composer

Harry Gregson-Williams

Sound Sound

Walter Anderson Scott Millan David Parker Gary C. Bourgeois Michael Semanick Randy Singer Sarah Monat Robin Harlan Beth Sterner Fred Burke Scott Curtis Jeremy Pitts Peter Zinda Jon Title Chuck Michael Michael Kamper Doug Jackson Cary Butler Bruce Howell Walter Hoylman

Paramount Scott Rudin Productions Parker-Stone Productions

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

Arabic English French Korean

Releases by Date

11 oct 2004, 14 oct 2004, 10 oct 2004, 15 oct 2004, 02 dec 2004, 30 dec 2004, 14 jan 2005, 28 jan 2005, 09 mar 2005, 23 mar 2005, 13 may 2005, releases by country.

• Theatrical MA15+
• Theatrical 18
• Theatrical 14A
• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical 11
• Premiere R California
• Theatrical R
• Premiere R Starz Denver International Film Festival

97 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

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America, Fuck Yeah America... America... America, FUCK YEAH! Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah, America, FUCK YEAH! Freedom is the only way yeah, Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer to America, FUCK YEAH! So lick my butt, and suck on my balls, America, FUCK YEAH! What you going to do when we come for you now, It's the dream that we all share; It's the hope for tomorrow

McDonalds, FUCK YEAH! Wal-Mart, FUCK YEAH! The Gap, FUCK YEAH! Baseball, FUCK YEAH! NFL, FUCK, YEAH! Rock and roll, FUCK YEAH!…

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team america: world police (2004)

Team america: world police.

Team America, an international police force dedicated to maintaining global stability, learns that a power-hungry dictator is brokering weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. The heroes embark upon a harrowing mission to save the world. To infiltrate the terrorist network, Team America recruits Gary Johnston, a rising star on Broadway, to go undercover. Although initially reluctant to sacrifice his promising career, Gary realizes that his acting gift is needed for a higher cause. With the help of Team America leader, Spottswoode, and fellow members, Chris, Sarah, Lisa and Joe, Gary slips into an arms dealer’s hideout where he discovers that the terrorists’ plot has already begun to unfold. From the pyramids of Cairo to the Panama Canal and finally to the palace of power-mad dictator, Kim Jong I1, Team America crisscrosses the globe on a desperate mission to prevent world destruction. “Team America: World Police” is an action adventure from the creators of “South Park,” starring an all-marionette cast.

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