Okay, fine, I get it: what if we made a Michael Bay movie, but did it ironically...with awkward-for-giggles puppets and South Parkian (I like the word Parkian, while being fully aware that it doesn't exist) humor slash political commentary? It's a perfectly good conceit. And for the most part, they were successful. The overall design was flawless, the sly plays on puppetry peppered throughout were commendable, the "controversial" scenes, while not P.C. (surprise!), were far more entertaining than envelope-pushing. I particularly enjoyed the film's jabs at celebrity punditry, especially a few days after having witnessed Eminem (is that how he's spelled?) inspiring widespread political dialogue by being both famous AND able to convey his political sentiments via the filmmakers and mass media channels he is afforded based on his nuanced political expertise and intellectual clout fame.
Nonetheless, most of the movie was, dare I say it, a Michael Bay movie. Sure, it was a Michael Bay movie with puppets and oodles of interstitial wackiness, but it was so well parroted as to be...well, boring. I say this at the risk of sounding like all the folks who hated the end of Adaptation. I mean, we weren't supposed to like the melodrama of Team America. It was meta-narrative. It was irony! But while Adaptation was less ambitious in the wordly sense (which is to say, it did not attempt to parody nationalism, dogmatic leftism, banal action flicks and the vanity of celebrity all at once), I think it was far more successful at pulling off meta-narrative. The last part of Adaptation was just long enough to make you pissed that it existed, which was necessary to make the point. The point(s) of Team America didn't need elaborate treatment, and it would have been an absolutely brilliant short film. Unfortunately the South Park folks' fame afforded them enough time, money, and distribution to incite a major motion picture.
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