| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime magazines
for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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| team america: world peace
review |
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| details |
| The Genre: Action/Comedy |
| The Format: DVD |
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| The plot: Team America, an international agency
intent on maintaining global stability, learn that
terrorists, aided by a tyrannical dictator, have
hatched a plot to take over the world. Our heroes,
accompanied by a Broadway star who realises that
his true purpose on Earth is to save it, travel
the globe on a mission to thwart the dastardly dictator's
plan. |
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| back
to top |
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| opinion |
| I’m going to come straight to the point
with this review.
Yes, that’s right, no rambling pre-amble,
no pseudo-journalistic-look-at-me-I’m-an-amazing-writer-somebody-give-me-a-job
non-sequitur introduction; just my opinion on the
film. And here its is:
Meh. |
Yes, that’s right, ‘meh’.
I didn’t love it, but I then didn’t
really hate it, either. It was just sort of
all right.
I think part of the problem might have been
my expectations, though. My expectations were
high. A lot of people had told me the film
was great. My friends had told me it was ‘just
my cup of tea’. I had read reviews and
found out about the film and they’d
basically said it was funny and a great satire.
Now whilst it was funny, in parts, it really
wasn’t a great satire. It was a very
weak satire. In fact, it’s almost an
insult to the word satire for it to be used
in connection with this film.
This film is the type of satire that you
might get if you were to explain satire to
a bunch of stupid 12-year olds who’d
never watched the news and asked them to write
you a script. It’s just very poor, makes
very little sense, doesn’t know who
it’s meant to be attacking and doesn’t
know what point it’s trying to make. |
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|
Which really surprised me. South Park: Bigger,
Longer, Uncut is one of my favourite films, and
that is a great satire. The South Park film focuses
on the innate stupidity of blame culture; makes
some great points about censorship and has a gay
Saddam Hussein in it. It does all this whilst maintaining
the base humour of the original series.
In fact, I’m humming the tune to Uncle Fucker
as I write this.
That film was great. This film just doesn’t
hit the button. It fires off so many shots at so
many people it just seems like it’s been put
together by a bunch of emo teenagers.
But it’s not all bad. In fact, there are
some things the film does very well. |
 |
When Trey and Matt are sticking to their bread
and butter comedy the Team America really shines.
The jokes relating to gays and AIDS are genuinely
laugh-out-loud funny.
Similarly, the character-based jokes are also good
stuff. In fact, for me the Spotsworth character
almost steals the entire show.
If they’d stuck to this stuff and not attempted
to make some sort of satire on the whole US/Middle
East situation, then I think it would have turned
out a lot better. But as it is, it’s just
a badly mixed blend of the two.
Also, the whole film is supposed to be a satire
on the Jerry Bruckheimer School of film making,
where plot is secondary and action set pieces are
the focus. Bruckheimer films rely extensively on
stereotyping and easy characterisation. They’re
all about putting bums on seats, rather than making
films. |
 |
And maybe this is another reason I don’t
really like film. I kinda like Bruckheimer
films. I like a bit of explodey. I like visual
spectacle. Sometimes I just want to switch
my brain off and watch the car chase and not
have to worry about understanding what’s
going on.
A Bruckheimer film does exactly what it says
on the tin. And, more importantly, they never
claimed not too. So to take the piss out of
them for this seems kinda... dumb to me. I
mean why bother stating the obvious?
And what’s with the puppets?
I don’t get it.
Okay, so maybe you like the whole marionette
thing. Maybe making it with marionettes allows
you to put Celebes in that world never otherwise
appear in your film, but this seems like kinda
weak reasoning to me. I just found the whole
puppets thing kinda annoying, I guess. |
|
I mean, there where some good puppet related
gags, don’t get me wrong, but these have all
been made before. Christ, Anderson was doing his
thing 30-40 years ago; I think the full gamut of
puppet piss-taking humour has been run by now.
I dunno, I’m probably being overly-harsh
here, because the thing that really annoyed me about
Team America was that I didn’t really like
it all that much. But I’ve liked everything
else Trey and Matt have done, so I’ll just
consider this something of a blip.
Well, there’s only one thing left to talk
about, and that’s the DVD package itself.
In this respect I must say Team America really does
shine. There are documentaries and extras a-plenty.
Possibly the only missing thing is a commentary
track on the film itself, and I think this might
have added quite a lot to the film.
Hmm, I appear to have run out of things to say
some way shy of my usual review length. Maybe those
rambling pre-ambles serve a purpose after all? |
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| back
to top |
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| summary |
| The Summary: Meh, I wouldn’t recommend
it, but there are much worse films in the world. |
| The Score: 2/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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