Highly Strung

Team America: World Police
Paramount Home Video

Some people believe, not unreasonably, that there are events so terrible they should never become the subject of jokes. But South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are most definitely not among them. So it is that, midway through the marionette-starring Team America, a song arrives that flagrantly attempts to mine comic material from one of this country’s darkest hours — the release of the movie Pearl Harbor.

“I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school/He was terrible in that film,” croons the film’s hero, a Broadway actor turned lovelorn antiterrorist named Gary Johnston. “And now all I can think about is your smile/And that shitty movie too/Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.”

Of course, the pair’s lampooning of the bloated pseudo-epic is the least controversial aspect of a movie that depicts the war against terrorism as doing far more harm than good while also showing Hollywood liberals as egomaniacal dickheads or, in the case of Matt Damon, mentally retarded. This attempt to offend viewers of all political stripes may have been partly responsible for the tepid box-office figures of a movie that follows the attempts of the titular elite force (theme song: “America: F**k Yeah!”) to thwart the world-destroying plans of thickly accented Korean leader Kim Jong Il (theme song: “I’m So Ronery”). But blame must also go to the fact that most of the film’s best moments, from a lengthy puppet sex scene to the priceless Jerry Maguire–parodying line “You had me at ‘dicks fuck assholes,’” couldn’t be shown in trailers.

Certainly, the problem isn’t the quality of the jokes. True, the relentless attacks on the likes of Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin do wear thin. But for the most part, Parker and Stone’s puppets are put to hilariously demented, obscene and/or disgusting use. In particular, anyone who thinks there’s nothing funnier than a human drunkenly puking may care to revise their opinion after they see a puppet do it.