October 15, 2004

More, please, sir…

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the guys in the back of the classroom who really mean it. So many "rebels" turn out to be desperate bankers, raging against the machine until an attitude that can get them laid quicker comes along. Not them.

But they are also artists and, like so many, they are possessed by one great idea. For these guys, South Park is that idea. Through the mouths of foul-mouthed babes, truth rages forth. Because of animation there are no limitations, nothing that cannot happen, whether it's a mecha-Streisand or the sex life of Satan and Saddam Hussein, it's all up for grabs.

Which is why Team America: World Police was such a letdown for me.

It is, in fact, brilliantly made. Bill Pope's cinematography is really worth of awards consideration. The puppetry is beyond expert, from the movement to the mechanized mouth movement that you buy into from the start.

But as odd as this seems to me even as I write it, the movie suffers because the guys laid back on the content. The idea of satirizing Jerry Bruckheimer movies with puppets is funny… on paper. But those movies are so far beyond reality already that they are almost beyond satire. (The same trouble crops up, oddly, in The Incredibles. But that is another review for another day.) There are laughs, seeing puppets do what puppets don't normally do. Okay. Got it. Where is the rest of the movie?

There are, by my count, six big laughs in Team America once you get past the premise… or as I call it, #7. The biggest - the only one the size of many I had in South Park: Longer, Bigger & Uncut - is a gross-out joke, aided by the fact that these are puppets (though Monty Python did manage it with a human) and by Parker & Stone's relentlessness as laugh getters.

And fuck yeah and all, but if I was paying $11 to see the movie, would that be enough to make me happy I paid for the journey? Honestly, Harold & Kumar Go To The White Castle blows this movie away. Napoleon Dynamite is far more original and daring. But as I was sitting in the screening, I was really, really wanting to go with it… to laugh more, harder and smarter.

Paramount had enough sense of humor to blow up the R rating tag with its list of offensive acts followed by "all involving puppets." But that reality is funnier and more resonant than any of the jokes in Team America.

People are murmuring about the politics of the movie… but there are none! The movie is steeped in west Los Angeles, with the unknown uber-villain Kim Jong Il as the bad guy (Saddam is captured) and the folly of actors dabbling in politics as the target… a target that only people who feel compelled to pay attention to actors dabbling in politics could ever care about.

How funny is calling people you don't like "FAG"s? Maybe it's funny once. But even then, not that funny. You can easily see why the acronym for Film Actors Guild evolved… makes sense… quick laugh… etc. But like the recent Hollywood Hell House theater installation, the satire is in constant danger of being unfunny… as in, even if people saying abortion is the devil's work is funny, how funny is a teen on a surgical table having her fetus hacked up by a drunken doctor, even if it is meant as satire… even more so when the satire is being done by people who are fighting George Bush in no small part to keep coat hanger abortions from happening in this country?

A big part of the genius on the South Park movie was having Saddam team up with a greater power, The Devil. And even The Devil didn't really want to do Saddam's bidding, but the power of love and lust overcame his forked tail logic. These are emotional complexities, even in very broad satire, that bring that film alive. Here, a puppet gets laid. But the melodrama of the Bruckheimer films almost always involves a child and parent… none here. The hero emerges from their own reluctance because they finally get the purpose of the mission… not here. And more often than not, the hero starts as an antihero… not here.

Of course, Team America is the perfect Rotten Tomatoes movies. No critic wants to brush it off and take the chance of being uncool. If you really look at the reviews, the ambivalence between the quotes is palpable. And the truth is, even being tough on the movie, I wouldn't warn anyone not to see it. My tomato will probably be red too. I enjoyed the movie. I laughed out loud 10 times.

But the second act, when Team America members really consider what they are doing and decide that it is a horrible mistake to blow up the Eiffel Tower… then change their mind and sink Rhode Island at the end… that is what's missing, non-specifically, from this film.

The thing about satire is that it has to work as a story first. Team America really doesn't. If they had brought Alec Baldwin into the fold instead of Gary… and he seduced the girl and the other team members, but then turned out to be a pawn of Kim Jung Il… try that on. Because puppets blowing shit up, having sex and cursing a lot is funny… but for half an hour or so. And these guys, they are capable of so much more. Watch any of of 90% of South Park episodes and consider how complex the plot is and how unpredictable and how Cartman is so funny because he is still a short little fat kid with a bad voice…

Some will try to write my comments here off as "he had a movie he wanted to see and they didn't do what he wanted so he's unhappy." Not so. The think I love about Parker & Stone is that they take me places I would never have thought of going on my own. But not this time.

Team America… fuck sigh…

READER OF THE DAY: DARLING NIKKI writes: "It's criminal that nobody's talking about Maria Full of Grace for Best Picture, Director, or even Foreign Language film.

Motorcycle Diaries is highly over rated. It's basically a really light hearted comedy (there was zero tension or conflict in this movie so I don't consider it a drama) about one of the great revolutionaries in history. Now that we know that there's a market for this type of film, I can't wait for the Farrelly Bros's take on Hitler, or Nora Ephron's Stalin.

It's also interesting that Walter Salles manged to make a movie about Che Guevara (of all people) and have him not even be the most interesting character in the movie!!

The guy who plays his best friend steals the entire movie. And it's not even so much because his performance was that much better than Gael Garcia Bernal (it was), his character was just a better written character."

And this from THE NATTY ONE: "No one complains that Spielberg "only" donates part of his multi-billion dollars to his charity. It is just accepted that he is doing a great thing for kids with some of the money he has been blessed with, and that it's good of him to do so. No one makes comments about Oprah asking people to send in a couple dollars for her "Angel Network" when she probably can afford to buy the entire Hancock Building as her personal apartment. We're just pleased to see someone who worked hard to get to where she is now inspire people to help others, as well as giving some money herself. Why can't Gibson be given the same treatment?

I mean, sure -- it'd be great if all of the big Hollywood types decided to donate the entirety of their gazillion dollar paychecks to the rest of us, keeping only what they need to live on, but since that ain't gonna happen -- ever (THAT would be worth reporting!) -- can't Gibson be given the same treatment as the rest of the 'stars?' The article didn't even mention the profits from "The Passion" -- only your headline did.
Speaking for myself, I didn't even especially like the movie "The Passion," (It isn't really a film that lends itself to popping a bag of popcorn and kicking back on the sofa to watch) but given a choice between watching it or watching the same old stereotypes of born-again Christians that we get to see in movies nowadays (ie "Saved" and "Silver City"), I still gave it my $10 worth of support while it was in theatres. (OK, yes, I realize "Passion" wasn't exactly about born-again Christians, since Jesus and his followers were Jewish, but you probably understand my point.)

The fact that the phrase "born-again Christian" is only used in films as a punchline, and when someone does a film to appeal to born-again Christians, HE becomes the punchline, probably has a lot to do with the support the film is getting. No one likes to be the focal point of bigotry. I know some people claiming the born-again label have been guilty of it (read: those idiots who we all wish had never discovered poster board that stand outside of courtrooms and near parade routes), but turnabout is not always fair play - not when it attacks an entire group."

E-ME: My take on Gibson's money is only that he sold the movie as a religious event, so the tithings should, in no small part, be used for acts of faith. My opinion.

So what's on your plate this weekend? And how did it chew?