Ripped: Team America?

Clearly I must be getting frickin' old or something...
A few months ago babou gave me a VCD he created after downloading a rip of Team America: World Police. For anybody who doesn't know, this movie is a puppet-show in the style of the old Thunderbirds "Super-Marionation" technique... as written by the creators of South Park. And if you haven't heard of South Park, you may skip the rest of this blog entry entirely.

Anyway, the key verb above was that babou GAVE me his VCD. He didn't loan it to me or anything. He and mommybabou just said they were so disgusted by this film that they weren't likely to "enjoy" it again.

Now I know why.

After months of letting it sit on my shelf, I finally took it down and watched it last night. And all I can say is, "what a squandered opportunity." First of all, seems to me that puppeteering is a lost art. Besides this movie, the only film I can think of in recent memory that had anything to do with intricately constructed puppets was Being John Malcovic. And even then it served as nothing more than a plot point. There's a certain charm to seeing non-humans in a movie - much like watching a cartoon... it's an art-form.
Secondly, it's clearly a tongue-in-cheek poke at American ethnocentricity. And while I'm all for that, I'm disppointed to find that Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker don't have it in them to find anything more creative than extreme toilette humour... which in itself isn't all that humorous to begin with. Granted I was watching the "Unrated" version last night. I can only hope that the theatrical version was somewhat more streamlined and maybe funnier.

I give the movie 1 thumb down - for its sheer stupidity. It's definitely the second dumbest movie I've ever seen (the first dumbest being South Park The Movie). At least in this film, the cast didn't break out into song...