What was great was the audience was full of obvious South Park fans … so the warped sense of humor was shared by everyone there. Everyone “got” the jokes.
For example:
— the little French kid (er – puppet) skipping along singing, of course, “Frere Jacques”. Such a STUPID joke, and so damn FUNNY.
— I thought I might have to leave the theatre during Kim Jong-Il’s melancholy ballad “I’m So Lonely”. I was cackling, snorting, and making a scene. Thankfully, I was not alone. I am still laughing about it. The sort of echo put on his voice, those insane googly glasses, the sight of the PUPPET wandering around his empty palace … It was insanely funny.
— I kept just thinking: “The whole IDEA of this film is genius. I mean … marionettes? What??” Those guys are incredible. And the puppets were extraordinary.
— I loved that “Intelligence” was an actual computer. “There’s intelligence.” And that “intelligence” had a kind of “hey, there, dude, wassup” voice was even funnier.
— Matt Damon only being able to say his own name. hahahahahahahaha And the Matt Damon puppet was so freakin’ funny … the kind of squished face … heh heh And any time he had to speak, all he could get out was a kind of garbled: “Matt Damon.”
— Oh my God, and the take-off of “Rent”?? The musical called “Lease”? I still can’t get past it. It was almost too funny to even laugh at. The bogus pseudo-pop singing voices, the chick in blue shiny pants hanging on the balcony (if anyone has seen “Rent”, you’ll know of what I speak) … SICK TWISTED HUMOR AND I LOVED IT.
— I found the entire movie very cathartic, actually. Not just because it was funny, but because of everything it made fun of … The criticisms and ridicule were spot-on, I thought. Across the board. Alec Baldwin’s ponderous self-importance, and Sean Penn saying over and over again in a squeaky voice, “I went to Eye-raq, I went to Eye-raq!” It was so SATISFYING. Cathartic. Like the Greeks used to talk about. (I’m quite serious.) The laughter I heard around me was coming out of a sense of release, relief, almost – like: OH my God, YES, I’ve been feeling just this way!! Also, that this ridicule would come from “the inside” (as in: fellow actors, performers, whatever) is even better. Come on – take these people down a peg. Everyone here knows how I feel about most of these people as ACTORS (I love Susan Sarandon, I love Sean Penn, I have thought Tim Robbins was great) … but as elder statesmen? What? I didn’t “elect” those people to represent me in politics. Sean Penn whining about his treatment in this movie shows how much of a bubble this guy lives in. You can dish it out, but you can’t take it. You live in a pampered world where no one says “no” to you. Like: come on, man, you set yourself up as a HUGE target … so take the shit that you get. Take it like a man. Stop yer whining.
— The puppet-sex-scene was positively disturbing and outrageously funny.
— The soundtrack is hysterical.
— The melancholy love song that had “‘Pearl Harbor’ sucked” as its chorus was howlingly funny. Like … the entire song degenerated into this diatribe against Ben Affleck’s bad acting and how the movie “missed the point”, and how Cuba Gooding is a much better actor … but all with this sort of pop-ballad melody. It was RIDICULOUS. And so funny.
— Also, I can’t help but go back to this: the puppets themselves. They were so COOL, so biZARRE … the strings going up into nowhere-land … During the sex-scene montage (“we need a montage … if you fade out during a montage, it shows you time has passed … we need a montage …”) – one of the things that flashed into my mind was that the puppeteers must have been howling with laughter, out of sight, as they put these naked puppets through the Kama Sutra. It was so RIDICULOUS.
— The South Park guys are pretty much agnostic when it comes to their vicious sense of humor. Everybody gets whacked. They make fun of things that a lot of people hold dear, however they don’t pick and choose. Anything that anyone might hold “sacred” is up for grabs. I love that attitude. They attack those who wish to live in a black-and-white world. Also – because it’s done with humor, I appreciate it. It’s such a RELIEF, to make fun of EVERYTHING, and not take everything so damn seriously.
— I still can’t get over Kim Jong-Il’s lonely ballad. That alone was worth the price of admission. His sad face, his googly eyes behind the glasses, his small fat belly, the echoey palace … sitting longingly at the piano … I mean, it was genius. Sheer comedic genius.
Did you know that they stuffed the Michael Moore puppet with a whole ham before they blew it up? These guys are geniuses.
And the guy with the Leslie-Nielson-in-Airplane voice … the one in charge of “Team America” – who always had a glass of scotch in his hand, or a cigarette? HYSTERICAL.
Did you read Roger Ebert’s overly-earnest review of this movie? Where he went on about how wrong it is to not take all of this stuff seriously and crap like that? I just thought, what a sanctimonious, self-righteous ass. Look, were all stressed about the war and all the bad news we’re bombarded with daily. THAT IS EXACTLY WHY WE NEED THIS. We need to laugh.
Oh, and good call on Sean Penn. Brilliant actor. Stupid, stupid man. That letter was one of the goofiest things I’d read in a while. It said a lot more about Penn than he simply wrote.
You just can’t take yourself too seriously. You just can’t. I am sure it is hard, when you are a star living in a bubble … but you have GOT to keep some perspective.
That’s one of the reasons why I love those old-time actors so much. They didn’t see themselves as anything other than talented craftsmen … They were EMBARRASSED to be caught taking acting too seriously.
Like Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant … these guys all had pretty serious political convictions, obviously, on both sides of the fence … but they weren’t all ponderous with self-importance about their “roles” as public figures. That would have embarrassed those dudes, I think.
Oh my God, and Hans Blix (or “Hans Brix”) showing up at Kim Jong-Il’s palace and saying that if N. Korea didn’t comply, the UN was going to write a letter telling them that they were “very very angry with them” …
That was hands down my most favorite part of the movie. A perfect jab at the uselessness of the UN. “I’m fucking busy!”
Why we love Sheila O’Malley
Stuff like this: Very exciting I am going to see Team America tonight. Start off the day with Federalist # 10 and end it with Team America? Hell, yeah. Here are her comments on Federalist 10 and her review of…
I still don’t understand why Babra wasn’t in there? Is she so lawyered-up that no one dare take the piss out of her? Is Trey her unacknowledged love child? Was she such a huge target that it would have been shooting fish in a barrel?
“Step a rittrle to the reft, Hans Brix…”
And after he announces himself as the genious organizer of the show-at-the-end-of-the-show (can’t remember the name of it now): [feigning surprise] “Oh, herro!”
And the puppet fight scene in the beginning, in Paris.
The more I think about the movie, the funnier it becomes.
Yeah, the fight scene was killer.
They might have thought – Why pick on Barbra anymore? She hasn’t been a particularly huge target this past election … definitely not like Sean Penn has been. She’s too busy being married and being happy, I think. I’m an unashamed Barbra fan. Can ya tell?? And I cannot WAIT to see her in “Meet the Fokkers” (or however you spell it.) With the huge goof-ball Afro? It looks hilarious.
Carry on.
Oh, I also thought the Team America cocktail hour was hysterical. The dancing puppets, trying to get their love lives in gear … with their hip sort of boy-band Hillary Duff costumes …
So ridiculous!!
I think Barbra bashing is passe, as they did it all several years ago on South Park with Mecha-Streisand and SpookyVision.
hahahahahaha That’s right!!
I loved that song from “Lease” – “Everybody Has AIDS”. These guys must be the only two people brave enough to crack jokes like that.
And the chorus chiming in from the background?? Jeez.
Yeah – that takes balls to make that joke. But having seen Rent myself, I have to say: it’s so RIGHT ON.
I remember my cousin coming back from seeing Rent and saying, “Yeah, whatever, it was good and stuff – but I couldn’t help but think: Why don’t you people just get jobs??” My cousin’s a Broadway actress herself! But even she was like: “I have to pay rent, you have to pay rent, we all have to pay rent – GET A JOB.”
heh heh heh
How about the signal they work out with Gary if he’s cought by the terrorists? Waving his arms in the air while making a scared face? Oh. My. God! I thought I’d pee my pants.
Plus: “Sending them in without an actor is like sending pigs to the slaughter!” Oh, man!
Sheila, I was cackling with laughter at work today because I was listening to “I’m so Ronery” on my walkman.
“I can’t compete with Alec Baldwin, he’s the greatest actor who ever lived!”
I loved how they were so self depricating with the puppets in some ways. I always cackled anytime a puppet had to move out of a room, or something. They’d get all limp bodied, spun and sort of dragged a bit. Or when Sarah tried to point to Gary’s heart, only to not have her arm reach.
Sheila, you’ll have to get a DVD player by the time this puppy’s out on DVD. I cannot wait to see the ‘unedited’ version.
During the credits they played bits of the songs from the movie (Montage!), but the final one was new… and hilarious. Unfortunately I don’t remember what it was about. Anyone else stay for that and remember the final song in the credits? Thanks.
Spottswoode was the guy in charge. Loved how his chair just kind of moved around randomly.
I read a quote by Stone and Parker that said they really liked Matt Damon, but the puppet version ended up looking so stupid, they made him an idiot who can only say his own name.
If you can’t laugh at yourself, you have no business in the public eye, because other people _will_ laugh at you, even before you get famous enough for Stone & Parker to really skewer you.
It’s odd how conservatives are stereotypically supposed to be the humorless prigs, but it’s the left wing that cries foul when their sacred cows get taken down a peg.
And it’s a shame that their early obsession with toilet humor turned off a lot of people to Stone & Parker’s work…they’re proving themselves to be among the best satirists working today.
Matt:
I see what you’re saying, and I agree to some extent, but I am SURE there are conservatives out there who don’t share the irreverent sense of humor of these guys – and who wouldn’t find it funny at ALL. After all, the movie’s title pokes fun at America taking the self-appointed role of “world police”, Americans not caring they blow up the Sphinx, etc.
I could list a couple of bloggers I read on occasion who are so one-sided and so black-and-white and who think anyone who would vote for Kerry is the spawn of evil, and who are so blinded by the fact that America MUST ALWAYS BE RIGHT that they wouldn’t be amused by this movie at all.
There was an article a while back, I think in Reason – that talked about “South Park Republicans” – this new movement of younger more open-minded more irreverent “Republicans” – and I think there’s a huge difference between THEM and the real hard-core religious-right conservatives.
As a matter of fact, I know there is!
Dead Wrong
I briefly mentioned Roger Ebert’s comments on Team America yesterday at Sheila’s place under her review for the film, but I wanted to write about it a little more because it bugged me so damned much. He wrote: I were…
The final song during the crawl was another melancholy balled by Kim Jong-Il (or, rather, his insectoid alien cockroach persona) that had the repeated line, “You ret me down, Arec Bardwin,” and talked about how bad things would be when he got back to his home planet since his plans for the conquest of the Earth had been screwed up.
See, when you stick around for the crawl to finish, you sometimes get a present!
hahahaha
“You ret me down, arec bardwin”…
God. That is fucking funny.
Dead Wrong
I briefly mentioned Roger Ebert’s comments on Team America yesterday at Sheila’s place under her review for the film, but I wanted to write about it a little more because it bugged me so damned much. He wrote: I were…