Sometimes an idea needs the right climate to be properly exploited. When south Park co-creator Trey Parker first saw an episode of Thunderbirds he thought the sight of an action or disaster film being performed by puppets would be funny. It was never going to be as funny as the puppets appearing on screen in star spangled banner coloured attack vehicles to loud music that screams "America! Fuck yeah!".
Team America: World Police chronicles the work of a Thunderbirds style US anti-terrorism team that operates out of Mount Rushmore. Wherever there are WMDs or suspicious looking foriegners they will be there to blow the surrounding area to pieces with the kind of accuracy generally reserved for trainee stormtroopers. However North Korean leader Kim Il Jong and Film Actors Guild president Alec Baldwin are determined to destroy Team America.
Whilst Team America acts as an exceedingly broad satire on American foriegn policy it is vague enough not to mention Iraq, George Bush or Osama Bin Laden directly. This stops the film falling into the kind of skull beating polemicism that would kill the mood. Instead it focusses more on the action cinema genre. This is why the film has encountered more contreversary for it's puppet sex sequences than for it's political leanings.
Where the oppourtunity to make a stupid, offensive or absurd joke presents itself the film grabs it with both hands. It does this with such success that it's constant torrent of jokes stands comparison with Airplane, the king of the stupid movie spoofs. The use of puppets highlights the absurdity of the films it spoofs in was Hot Shots could only dream of and highlights how wooden the re-makes of Thunderbirds and The Magic Roundabout are.
Team America never sets it's sights too high and with the height of it's wit being simple but effective exchanges like "There's no 'I' in Team America" or "If you let us down, I'm going to drill holes in your penis so when you pee it goes in all directions". Hardly the kind of humour that Oscar Wilde would be kicking himself for not writing but perfectly pitched for this films audience. If you don't enjoy this film you should have know better than to have gone and seen it.