Team America: World Police Blu-ray offers solid video and great audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
Popular Broadway actor Gary Johnston is recruited by the elite counter-terrorism organization Team America: World Police. As the world begins to crumble around him, he must battle with terrorists, celebrities and falling in love.
For more about Team America: World Police and the Team America: World Police Blu-ray release, see Team America: World Police Blu-ray Review published by Michael Reuben on October 11, 2015 where this Blu-ray release scored 3.0 out of 5.
I mean, I love Team America. I'm glad we did it, I'm proud of it. But would I ever
do it again? No. — Matt Stone
The comic bad-boy duo of Trey Parker and Matt Stone have several fan bases. The largest are
habitual viewers of their satirical animated series, South Park, now in
its
nineteenth season on
the Comedy Central network. More occasional (but no less devoted) fans are those who
appreciate the Parker/Stone parodies of popular art forms, especially musical theater. These are
the people who flocked to the pair's theatrical debut, The Book of Mormon, when it was still in
previews and no one knew whether it would even survive the opening. (The show is now in its
fifth year.)
During those early performances, Parker and Stone sat in a box near the front of the Eugene
O'Neill Theatre, focusing intently not on the stage but on the audience below, studying reactions
to every song and gag. (I know this, because I was in one of the preview audiences they were
observing.) Seated next to them was their co-writer on Mormon, Robert Lopez, who had already
achieved theatrical success with Avenue Q, a musical entirely about puppets and their travails in
life. Thus did fate conspire to unite the creative forces behind two 21st Century classics of
puppetry to write a hugely successful musical about the equally unlikely subject of Mormonism.
There should never have been any doubt that Parker and Stone could write a popular musical for
the stage, because they'd already done it twice for the movies: once with the big screen version of
their TV show, South Park: Bigger, Longer
and Uncut (or "SP:BLU"); and then again with Team
America: World Police, their tribute to "Supermarionated" shows of the Sixties such as
Thunderbirds and Supercar. Both SP:BLU and Team America employed
time-honored musical
theater devices that Parker has confessed on numerous occasions are dear to his heart. (He cries
at Les Miserables.) He has proudly reported being complimented on the songs of both films by
no less an authority than Stephen Sondheim.
SP:BLU has long been available on Blu-ray. Paramount is now releasing Team America on Blu-ray through its licensing
and
distribution deal with Warner. Unfortunately, although the film is
decently represented, Paramount has omitted the substantial extras previously included on its
DVDs of Team America.
The "actors" in Team America are marionettes with visible strings. The story is a parody of
action movies. The style was drawn directly from the oeuvre of producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
According to cinematographer Bill Pope, the mantra on-set was, "What would Bruckheimer do?",
to which Team America's answer usually involves blowing up something or gunning down
someone. (To ensure that imitation is not mistaken for the sincerest form of flattery, the score
contains a song called "The End of an Act" that thoroughly trashes the Bruckheimer-produced
Pearl Harbor and includes the refrain: "Pearl
Harbor sucked!") For raw material, the team and
their co-writer, South Park alum Pam Brady, drew on current events, much as South Park
continues to do to this day.
The supposed good guys known as "Team America" are an elite corps of anti-terrorism
specialists commanded by Spottswood (Daran Norris, doing an impression of Charlton Heston)
from a not-so-secret base inside the monument at Mt. Rushmore. Dispensing with such
distractions as sovereign borders, diplomacy and international agreements, these hot shots fly
into troubled zones in aircraft gaudily painted red, white and blue, then proceed to mop up in
minutes what the entire U.S. military could not handle in years. There's always time to pause
during the battle for a deep, personal confession of private pain, a declaration of long-buried love
or a confrontation with some inner demon à laTop Gun. The master computer,
I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. (voiced by Phil Hendrie), keeps Team America on track—most of the
time.
In the opening sequence, former quarterback Joe (Parker), blonde psychologist Lisa (Kristen
Miller), martial arts expert Chris (Stone), brunette empath Sarah (Masasa Moyo) and cannon
fodder Carson (Parker again) defeat a terrorist attack on Paris, although they do destroy the Eiffel
Tower, the Louvre and the Arc d'Triomphe in the process. Carson is killed, causing sorrow and
guilt that will haunt Team America for a long, long time (or at least until the end of the movie).
Spottswood decides that what the team needs more than anything is an actor who can go
undercover and learn the secrets of a rumored terrorist plot that will dwarf 9/11. He recruits Gary
Johnston (Parker yet again), a talented performer currently starring in the hit Broadway musical,
Lease. (If the title alone doesn't crack you up, there's a whole side to Parker and Stone that
you're missing.)
Most of the plot concerns Gary's efforts to quell his inner doubts, win Lisa's heart and overcome
Chris's distrust of all actors (which stems from a secret childhood trauma), all the while defusing
the dastardly plan of the real terrorist mastermind, North Korea's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il (also
voiced by Parker, with a politically incorrect accent). Kim's stooges include a host of Middle
Eastern front men, as well as a bevy of Hollywood celebrities belonging to a SAG-like union
called the "Film Actors Guild" (and yes, the name results in an acronym that's a juvenile joke).
Led by its president, Alec Baldwin (who reportedly offered to supply his own voice but is instead
voiced by Maurice LeMarche), the Guild argues for peace, thereby serving as a timely diversion
for Kim while he carries out his attack. Eventually most of these celebs die in an extreme style
worthy of a Bruckheimer villain. Actress and liberal commentator Janeane Garafolo has said that
she was never more famous than when Parker and Stone put her with George Clooney as a bad
guy in Team America. (Clooney, who worked with Parker/Stone on SP:BLU, said he'd have been
offended if they had omitted him.)
Viewers of different political leanings and ideological stamps have often projected their own
views onto Parker and Stone. In the case of Team America, which was released in October 2004,
the two were accused of trying to influence the upcoming elections—but it's not clear in what
direction. The pair remain equal opportunity offenders, cheerfully spraying parody and satire
with the same abandon as Gary Johnston spews vomit after a night of heavy drinking (he outdoes
Mr. Creosote in Monty Python's The
Meaning of Life). The terrorists may rain down death and
destruction on the innocent, but so does Team America (accompanied by a rousing theme song
that's a parody of every fight anthem ever written). The Film Actors Guild may be full of
hypocrites and clowns, but the film's hero, male love interest and the salvation of Team America
is also an actor. Notably missing from Team America are the politicians, diplomats and military
leaders who are really calling the shots (unless one counts U.N. nuclear inspector Hans Blix, who
quickly disappears). Much like the marionettes that play them, the characters of Team America
are pop culture cliches, conceptual images manipulated by strings (visible and otherwise), whose
reality is as much an artificial construct as the Matrix. Even Team America's version of Kim
Jong-Il is no longer the real historical figure. He's the familiar misanthrope of a Disney cartoon,
who wouldn't be so evil if he weren't so misunderstood, as he explains in one of the film's best
songs, "I'm so Ronery". Other highlights include "Montage" when Gary is training and "Derka
Derk", a parody of the Star Wars cantina theme, both of which have nothing to do with politics
and everything to do with pop culture.
Where Team America suffers is in its overall tone. Parker and Stone later acknowledged in
interviews that they went back and forth on including their usual potty-mouthed humor,
eventually opting to leave it in. At their best, as in SP:BLU, the pair move so fluidly between real
issues and childish silliness that you've constantly off-balance, and the serious messages slide in
under the radar, even as you're gasping with laughter at the outrageous nonsense. But in SP:BLU,
the team was working with characters they knew well and a style of animation they had mastered
on TV. Team America required them to invent a whole new cast while simultaneously
developing an entirely new way of working in an alien style of filmmaking that, as they later
acknowledged, was much tougher than they expected. In the production's aftermath, reports
circulated that the comic duo had split from the strain, but the rumors were false; it was only the work that suffered. It lacks
the final polishing that might have elevated Team America to the first rank of Parker's and
Stone's work. (The pair never even had time to view the whole film from start to finish until
release prints were being screened.) As the final product stands, individual sequences stand out,
but the film often feels labored—and comedy should seem effortless.
The Matrix trilogy's cinematographer,
Bill Pope, shot Team America: World Police, and he has
spoken at length about the challenges of recreating an action movie style with puppets and
miniature sets. Although the film was released in 2004, there is no indication in the credits or
elsewhere that post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, although digital effects
were employed, including compositing of multiple figures, where the scene called for more
puppets than could be accommodated on a single set.
The 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray being distributed by Warner appears to be the exact same disc
that Paramount released abroad in 2013. The plethora of language options indicates that the data
package has been prepared for worldwide release, whereas discs specially prepared for North
American coverage under the Paramount/Warner licensing detail have typically been limited to
English, French and/or Spanish. However, even though the transfer isn't brand new, it's
reasonably good, due in no small part to the crisp lighting style. Detail is good, blacks are solid
and colors are strong without oversaturation. The film's Super35 photography is fine-grained, but
the grain pattern does not appear to have suffered from untoward digital manipulation. With no
extras to take up space (see below), Team America has been authored at an average bitrate of
33.74 Mbps, and the compression has been carefully done.
Note that the location shots of Gary Johnston at national monuments during "Freedom Isn't Free"
are of noticeably lesser quality than the rest of the film, but this appears to be inherent to the
source.
As much as a film featuring puppets can have an aggressive sound mix, Team America has a kind
of parody of an action soundtrack, with much gunfire, numerous explosions and sounds of
aircraft cruising, diving, evading and dogfighting. Bass extension is serious but not excessive.
Dialogue is always clear, even with some of the outlandish accents adopted by Parker and Stone
in their efforts to differentiate multiple characters. Henry Gregson-Williams had only a short time
in which to compose the score, after the studio rejected Mark Shaiman's version, but Gregson-Williams had worked on enough Bruckheimer projects to
turn around something that was both comic and authentic, and it sounds great. The songs, by either Parker, or Parker with Shaiman,
sound equally good.
Paramount released three DVD editions of Team America in 2005 (theatrical widescreen,
theatrical fullscreen and unrated widescreen), and all of them came with the same rich collection
of extras: trailers, deleted scenes, animated storyboards and nine featurettes. The Blu-ray has
none of these extras or, indeed, any extras at all. Also, unlike most previous Paramount releases
through Warner, this disc appears to have been prepared entirely by Paramount; the company's
logo flashes briefly when the disc loads. The only positive note is that bookmarking functionality
has been included with the BD-Java coding.
In an interview given just as Team America was being released, Parker and Stone acknowledged
that many people would probably hate the film. Although it recouped its cost, it saw nothing like
the success of SP:BLU. Maybe it was the era, but then again the so-called "war on terror"
remains as polarizing an issue today as it was in 2004. Regardless of one's views on the subject,
Team America is a unique film by anyone's standard. Avoid it if you're easily offended, but
otherwise it's worth your time. The Blu-ray is technically acceptable, but for leaving off all the
extras, Paramount/Warner shouldn't get anything more than a rock-bottom sale price.
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