Team America: World Police

A bizarre and very funny animation satire based on the model of the cult television series Thunderbirds. With puppers on strings, indeed, as if there was no such thing as computer animation. A special police unit flies around the world with advanced vehicles and plenty of weapons andexplosives to combat evil. If chasing an Arab means the Louvre gets blown sky high that’s just tough luck. The politics of President George W. Bush has alreayd provided plenty of razor-sharp satire. And plenty of kinds of animation have been used to transgress the frontiers of the admissible. Hundreds of examples are circulating on Internet. Made with a small budget and great political zeal. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the masterbrains behind South Park, take a very different approach here. The unbridled and basically rude satire was made with a large budget (43 million dollars). Not enough tomake Spider Man, but enough to hire Bill Pope, cameraman on Spider Man 2, and you can take your time making elaborate puppets move through beautiful sets. Another difference. Stone and Parker fight all the lies and hypocrisy that have been ventilated in the war on terror. Both on the left and the right. Maybe the left of Tim Robbins and Michael Moore even comes off worse. But real tyrants like North Korea’s Kim Long-il don’t get off scott free either. (GjZ)