[4]

I enjoyed Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut because it lampooned many things. It was like a greatest hits collection of the South Park TV show, and the songs were all far more amusing than they had any right to be. So I went into Parker and Stone’s Team America: World Police with similar expectations and was very disappointed. Team America is a one-joke movie compared to South Park, and the joke wears thin as the run time continues. I mean, does a satire on American foreign affairs really need a feature film, or would it be just as nice (and much tighter) as a skit on some TV show? It would help if the characters were half as endearing as the ones in South Park. The motley crew of Team America are all a bit bland and the script treats them curiously real on several occasions. As though I might actually get wrapped up in the quasi-drama between wobbly wooden puppets. Most of the time, I couldn’t tell the puppets apart anyway. The highlight of the film is an epic sex scene between two puppets, but it’s not worth wading through the rest of the movie. I found myself glancing at the clock until Team America was over. Maybe I should appreciate the puppetry more. Maybe I’m just especially hard on (allegedly) funny movies. Maybe my sense of humor is just damaged. Either way, I just didn’t care about this movie.

And what’s more, I actually like Matt Damon. Since when did he get a reputation for being a dullard barely capable of saying his name?