This ‘Team’ is off its game

A combination of high concept and low humor, “Team America: World Police” is both more and less than you might be expecting from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Hollywood’s reigning Titans of Transgression. Yes, it’s inventive, yes, it’s out-there and audacious, but no, it’s not always as funny as those good things would lead you to hope.

Who but the creators of “South Park” would have the nerve to come up with a combination political satire and action-adventure spoof, and do it all with actual marionettes? And to make the whole package raunchy enough to be just a splinter shy of an NC-17 rating? The mind boggles, it really does.

But for every moment when “Team America” makes you smile, there’s another that does not. While savage language can be amusing, it doesn’t automatically get laughs, something the filmmakers have a tendency to forget. Then there’s the project’s determination to take a politically neutral, plague-on-both-your-houses approach to today’s international situation, which makes “Team America” seem more schizophrenic than evenhanded.

“Team America” begins with its strongest suit, a spoof that the filmmakers admit they based on the brand of high-octane action epics that usually have Jerry Bruckheimer’s name on them. The setting is Paris, identified as “3,635 miles east of America.” Robed terrorists have weapons of mass destruction at the ready, but the free world has Team America, a high-spirited bunch of guys and gals who arrive on the scene in nifty uniforms and red, white and blue aircraft. “Hey terrorist,” team member Lisa (voiced by Kristen Miller) says as she aims her assault weapon and tosses her long blond hair, “terrorize this!”

To have this kind of pro forma scenario played out by wire-controlled marionettes, even ones that have animatronic heads covered with latex skins, is completely amusing. Despite their limitations, these puppets (often voiced by Parker, who also directed) display at least as much facial expression as Vin Diesel, and seeing them eventually launch into martial arts moves and make mad, passionate love, courtesy of puppet producers the Chiodo brothers, is not to be believed.

Equally entertaining are the film’s backdrops, delicious mock re-creations of cultural landscapes around the world (including touches like paving Paris streets with croissants), all credited to visual consultant David Rockwell (who also designed the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood) and production designer Jim Dultz.

From a satiric point of view, the target, though it’s never commented on, is the havoc oblivious Americans cause while they’re nominally saving the world. The Eiffel Tower may be decapitated, the Louvre may explode into ruins, but that doesn’t stop Team America from insisting to the shellshocked French, “Don’t worry, everything is bon.”

Headquartered deep inside Mt. Rushmore, the Team soon reaches a point where it needs a new member to supplement stalwarts like Joe, the former quarterback and natural leader from Nebraska, and Sarah, “the top empath from Berkeley’s School for the Clairvoyant.” Spottswoode, the Charlie of this particular group of Angels, decides on Broadway star Gary, whose double major in theater and world languages makes him the perfect candidate to act his way into the terrorists’ confidence.

The ringleader of world terror turns out to be not Osama bin Laden (who goes unmentioned) but an Elmer Fudd-sounding North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. He has one of the film’s most memorable moments when he evokes his personal plight by singing “I’m So Lonely,” which the film, not surprisingly intent on making fun of his accent, titles “I’m So Ronery.”

It’s at this point that “Team America,” for want of a better phrase, flip-flops and starts to mock the left, starting with Michael Moore, who is depicted as having a hot dog in each hand and condiment smears on his clothes.

Working from the premise that if they’re famous they’re fair game, writers Parker, Stone and Pam Brady proceed to take extremely personal aim at more than a dozen actors, including Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, skewering (and occasionally decapitating) them for what the film sees as their desire to mouth off and their naive belief in world peace.

It also attacks other celebs almost at random, as in the lyric that pines, “I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school.”

Because these attacks are so personal (no real-life person except the U.N.’s Hans Blix is so much as mentioned in the antiwar first part), the humor starts to feel dicier. So does calling this group F.A.G. (for Film Actors Guild) and throwing in some unpleasant male-on-male sexual situations that seem to be there just to embellish the film’s equal-opportunity-offender credentials.

Entertaining as it is at the start, “Team America” ends up falling back on the kind of foul language that feels more forced than exuberant. Being outrageous has become a credo for this crew, something they have to do because that’s what the job demands. But when anything, even iconoclasm, turns into a religion, the humor is likely to suffer.

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By the Numbers / Snip, snip

The “South Park” guys are at it again, pushing envelopes or at least testing the limits to which they can needle the MPAA ratings board. Their “Team America: World Police” is just the latest movie that initially was slapped with an

NC-17 and then trimmed (repeatedly) to get an R. The upcoming thriller “Saw,” which opens Oct. 22, is another. This random sampling of films that first ran afoul of the raters and subsequently retreated does not include movies that opted to go out unrated with no cuts.

Film (Year) / Domestic gross (in millions)

“Eyes Wide Shut” (‘99) / $55.7

“South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” (‘99) / 52.0

“Natural Born Killers” (‘94) / 50.3

“Monster’s Ball” (‘01) / 31.3

“Boogie Nights” (‘97) / 26.4

“American Psycho” (‘00) / 15.1

“Freddy Got Fingered” (‘01) / 14.3

“Boys Don’t Cry” (‘99) / 11.5

“The Cooler” (‘03) / 8.3

“The Rules of Attraction” (‘00) / 6.5

“Your Friends and Neighbors” (‘98) / 4.7

“Happiness” (‘98) / 2.8

“Kalifornia” (‘93) / 2.4

“Boxing Helena” (‘93) / 1.8

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Sources: Times staff research, Nielsen EDI

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‘Team America: World Police’

MPAA rating: R for graphic, crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language, all involving puppets.

Times guidelines: Extreme profanity, puppets shown in graphic sexual situations.

Trey Parker...Gary

Matt Stone...Chris

Kristen Miller...Lisa

Masasa...Sarah

Daran Norris...Spottswoode

A Scott Rudin/Matt Stone production, released by Paramount Pictures. Director Trey Parker. Producers Scott Rudin, Trey Parker, Matt Stone. Executive producers Scott Aversano, Anne Garefino. Screenplay Trey Parker & Matt Stone & Pam Brady. Cinematographer Bill Pope. Editor Thomas M. Vogt. Costumes Karen Patch. Music Harry Gregson-Williams. Production design Jim Dultz. Art directors Tom Valentine, John Berger. Set decorator Richard C. Walker. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.

In general release.