TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE (vt AMERICAN HEROES: 2003 US working title [according to IMDb]). Trey Parker, dir., co-script with Pam Brady and Matt Stone; producer with Matt Stone et al. Parker and Stone among most featured voices. USA: Scott Rudin Productions (prod.) / Paramount, UIP (dist.), 2004. Running time will vary between theatrical and DVD releases.

Political satire / theatre and film parody, with marionettes, in the manner of the British TV series Thunderbirds (1964-66). Relevant here for supercomputer I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E.—an imaging of "military intelligence"—and its limitations, and for the enthusiastic use of high-tech high-explosive weapons, much to the delight, apparently, of some members of the US audience (see IMDb user comments), over the destruction wrought in such nonUS cities as Paris. Note also the suitcase-weapons carried by terrorists and identified as "WMD"; we are not told if they are literal Weapons of Mass Destruction, as in suitcase nukes, or dispensers of mustard gas: the conflation of a-bombs and poison gas in the initialism "WMD" was and through 2004 remains important for the justification of the US-British invasion of Iraq. CAUTION: This is a gross movie even by Parker and Stone standards, and it contains a fallacious but plausible justification of the use of US destructive force that trashes foreign cities to save them; it also suggests that Muslim terrorists—just about the only Muslims we see, except victims—have and perhaps need a «wily Oriental» to lead them.