While I have on occasion stumbled across fem/slash fiction where Lady Penelope pours herself into pink PVC and does things with the Rolls Royce Eros statuette that have surely never been tested in the factory’s safety checks, Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation method has never been utilized for puppet porn. Until now.
It’s just one of many delightful transgressions against taste in this wicked and decadently revolting comedy from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the nice young gentlemen who previously brought us South Park and Cannibal – The Musical.
As the inspired title suggests, the primary target here is a certain country’s foreign policy, and Team America does a magnificent send up of splendid isolation for retards. The casual destruction of world landmarks, scene markers such as, ‘3635 miles east of America – France’, and songs like ‘America. Fuck Yeah’ are all amusing, but the film’s depiction of terrorists as evil-eyed Muslims who introduce themselves accordingly (“We are Bashir terrorists from the country of Somalia. Hello”) and babble endlessly about ‘Jihad’ would constitute groundbreaking satire if Fox News weren’t broadcasting similar representations around the clock. (Chillingly, Fox News has given the film the thumbs-up, but presumably they enjoyed singing along to ‘America. Fuck Yeah’)
This is, however, an equal opportunities evisceration, and everybody, as the movie puts it, ‘gets a Jihad on their ass’. When Hollywood’s leftist elite, led by Alec Baldwin, ‘The Greatest Actor In The World’, team up with North Korea’s Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, in protest at Team America’s interventionist actions, many bodily fluids are spilled while the luvvies continue to protest that Iraq “had flowery meadows” before the US arrived. There’s a similarly caustic obsession with the Bruckheimer-Simpson school of dickwaving blockbusters, and the plot – such as it is – neatly subverts the Top Gun template, while still finding time for motorbikes driving to epic power ballads, like ‘Freedom isn’t Free. It costs folks like you and me’.
Of course, it’s practically impossible to critique Team America, without using the pathetic phrase “and then there’s this bit where” while cataloguing the best gags. I’ll refrain from doing so, but I would recommend you watch out for Kim Jong-Il’s musical number ‘I’m So Ronery’, the Matt Damon puppet and the final tearful speech about “pussies being only an inch and a half from assholes.” You’re moved already. I can tell.

Cert 15 PG. Opens January 14