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8. Team America: World Police
Directed by Trey Parker
Score: 119

Forty: 4
Vis: 7
GavsEvans: 8
Plasma: 8
Karo: 10
John: 10
Poke: 13
Tangy: 19
Suprak: 19
Mythiot: 21

4. Forty
Matt Damon. I think everything Trey Parker and Matt Stone do is genius. I wont say only they could pull off a movie with marionettes but it cannot be an easy task. The puppets add another level of hilarity just in the way they move. The fights, the sex, the shoot-outs, everything is funnier because theres people right off screen pulling the strings. Its juvenile and raunchy and in true Parker and Stone fashion, no one is safe from being made fun of. Terrorists, Kim Jong Il, numerous celebrities, the French, the right, the left, the center. Probably missing others but this is an equal opportunity mock-fest. One thing thats always set these guys apart is their song writing and theres some excellent ones here. America, Fuck Yeah, Freedom Isnt Free, Only a Woman, Im So Ronery, Everyone Has AIDS. SO GOOD. I just had to put the soundtrack on and still laugh after hearing these songs a million times. Im pretty sure Team America offended a lot of people and thats partly why I love it.

7. Vis
Regardless of Trey Parker and Matt Stones current politics (and honestly, based off this movieit really shouldnt be a surprise), Team America remains really funny. Its a combination of just being completely irreverent in its humor, and the artistic choice to use marionettes made for hilarity throughout the film. I mean, with animation or live action, bad choreography or stilting motion is something that ruins the film. But with the puppets, its a feature, not a bug. Something about watching these janky puppets flop around and pretend to simulate walking, or martial arts, is amazing to me, and it makes the actions scenes comes across as that much more hilarious. And knowing that Matt & Trey wanted to do musicals, the number of funny songs in this film is great, including all-time classics like AIDS, Montage, and America Fuck Yeah.

Plus, I do appreciate that pretty much EVERYONE gets their moment to go through the wringer. The Hollywood liberals are right about Team America being overly-aggressive, but they take it too far and start siding with the terrorists. The terrorists are somewhat justified by Team America being overly-aggressive and destroying more than the terrorists manage (outside of Panama), but theyre still violent and actively trying to destroy the world. And then Team America itself are uncaring warmongers who just blow things up in the name of safety. The dicks/pussies/assholes speech is a perfect encapsulation of the message of the film, and I think it still holds up pretty well.

8. Gavs
Here we have the most unique film on the list, on account of being the only one that entirely uses puppets. This film can easily get laughs just from the way the puppets move or act - the way the terrorist the little boy bumps into in the opening scene slowly turns around and looks at him gets me every time. The concept of a big action movie like this being made entirely with puppets is inherently funny.

Whats also funny is having puppets do some of the outrageously inappropriate things shown in this film. In the same way South Park is funny because poorly animated children swear, Team America is funny because puppets swear, and have sex, and gruesomely kill each other. The world is a richer place for the BBFCs content warning for this film Contains strong language, violence and sex, all involving puppets. The sense of humour is similar to South Park, as expected from the two sharing creators. As in that one, celebrities come in for less than flattering portrayals, like Kim Jong Il as terrorist mastermind with plans for world destruction, as well as a more sensitive side stemming from his roneriness, or Matt Damon repeating his name like a Pokemon.

This film feels like the most topical one on the list, in that it was commenting specifically on US politics in the immediate aftermath of the War on Terror beginning. That ties it to a specific period, whereas the rest of the list has a more timeless feel to it. Almost twenty years on, that aspect, along with a few other things (the running gag of terrorist attacks being measured by how much worse than 9/11 they are, the song about how bad the film Pearl Harbor was, Kim Jong Il being the villain after his death in 2011) mean this one is showing its age in a way the other films on the list dont. Fortunately, thats not a dealbreaker because there is plenty of satire that will always be relevant, like the spoofing of patriotism and Americas role in the world. Team America are destructive saviours who cause as much damage as their targets do, who are more often than not Middle Easterners who speak foreign-sounding gibberish. Other countries are portrayed as small stereotypical areas with all their landmarks in close proximity to each other, and introduced with a message saying how far away from America they are. Although this film ranks highly, parts of the satire being a little dated keep this out of the top tier.

8. Plasma
Legendary humanitarian Kim Jong-il joins forces with weapons safety expert Alec Baldwin in this wacky puppet satire that I never expected to enjoy but somehow did.

Gotta say, I never really liked South Park, and when Team America started, I expected it to land in my Bottom 5. Then something magical happenedit actually clicked for me. The style of humor was hit-and-miss, but when it hits, BAM! I love how it attacks right-wing militarism and Hollywood hypocrisy all at once, pointing out how the people we look up to (Matt Damon!) dont have the answers.

The choice to use puppets turned me off at first, but its a brilliant creative choice because of the strings. I especially loved how the world leaders didnt have any strings and Kim Jong-ils strings were noticeably less visible than those of the soldiers and the actors (Matt Damon!).

And how prophetic was this movie? It predicted North Korea and celebrity virtue-signaling back when everyone couldnt think past the Middle East and GTAs Hot Coffee mod. B