Team America

on thursday, phillip and i went to see Team America: World Police. i thought it was really funny, but phillip didn't really like it. it's supposed to be silly and juvenile. if you like south park, you'll like this movie. it's quite irreverent and makes fun of american life, while trying to defend it at the same time.

the plot of "Team America: World Police" has the puppet team losing one of it's members in a bloody gun battle with osama bin Laden-looking terrorists, and seeking to replace him with an actor named gary johnston. the actor is not really into helping the team out, so he declines. in the mean time the world is threatened by a villain named kim jong-II from korea, who uses other terrorist groups around the planet as 'puppets' in his scheme to destroy the world. team america is captured, and now gary must reconsider and come to their rescue.




what i find interesting is that it was going to have an "NC-17" rating in the US, but after editing out a bunch of scenes, it was released as rated "R" by the MPAA. the scene that caused the most controversy is two characters having sex. first of all, they are wooden puppets. wooden puppets without sex organs pretending to have sex. the whole scene is quite humorous, if you ask me. the MPAA found the scene to be way more offensive than any others in the entire film. that's the thing i don't understand about america versus europe. in europe, the gratuitous violence would have to be cut down to a minimum before the puppet sex would. europeans are more leery about showing violence on television and movies than sex. isn't that the way it should be anyway? isn't that the reason why there are very few civilians who own/operate arms in almost every other country but the US? in team america, you see a ton of puppets get disemboweled, decapitated, set on fire, etc. the blood and guts and violence and hatred is A-OK, but two wooden puppets flopping around with no clothes on isn't? is that really what we should be teaching children? it's ok to kill people and blow stuff up, but it's not ok to have sex! sex is BAD! violence is GOOD! it just makes me ill.

anyway, i thought this movie was a lot of fun. the puppets were well made and the sets were awesome. the film makers insulted everyone they could think of, and went far enough to rename the screen actor's guild the film actors guild, thus using the acronym FAG throughout. hmmm...maybe they aren't liking some hollywood actors, could that be it?? i laughed a lot, so i guess i got my money's worth. i'd go see it if i were you :)