Team America: World Police is either exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally stupid, depending on how you look at it.

Meet Team America, an elite team of super cops who go around the world shooting up WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)-carrying terrorists, totally oblivious to what destruction they cause themselves to kill the terrorists.

Enter Gary Johnston (Trey Parker)—a Broadway actor who is famous for his role in “Lease”, an apparent parody of “Rent,” which features a crowning song about AIDS.  He is recruited by Team America to “act” his way into terrorist hideouts, so that he can learn their plans and thereby help save the world.

When terrorists strike the Panama Canal, the Film Actor’s Guild, headed by Alec Baldwin (Maurice LaMarche), speak out against Team America for their violent methods in favor of peaceful solutions with the terrorists.

From here the movie goes through a series of clichés as it tries to parody a dozen other films from Star Wars to Top Gun.  Being from the creators of Southpark, it kind of plays out like Southpark meets Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911.

You mustn’t let the fact that this film stars only puppets fool you.  This film does carry an “R” rating for a reason.  Not only do the characters run off at the mouth at every opportunity, but even their Team America theme song is unsuitable for radio play.  There’s even a sex scene, or two, with these puppets.

Now I did mention that this film is exceptionally brilliant if you look at it the right way.  This is true to the extent that it does provide an extremely good comment on society today with regards to international politics, the war in Iraq, the terrorist threat to the world, the way Americans typically respond to hostility and our hypocrisy of violence.

However, more often then not, the film goes too far with its gags that are meant to be funny, but put me to sleep instead.  One such over the top scene was depicting Michael Moore as a suicide bomber.

One interesting note is that the Team’s director of operations of has a Charlton Heston look and sound to him.  Interesting since the real Charlton Heston is a strong supporter of guns, and Team America solves the world’s problems by using guns to shoot up terrorists.

Director Trey Parker has however done a good job of creating this marionette world with miniaturized versions of Paris, New York and Mount Rushmore, which he took every opportunity available to have his characters destroy.  Of particular note is the opening scene in Paris, as the camera fades up from black, we see a marionette show with an obvious painted background.  The shot then opens up to reveal that it is a marionette show put on by “real” marionettes with a more realistic-looking scale-model Paris backdrop.

One possible comment that can be made about this movie is that you can see the strings holding up the characters.  However, this can quickly be shot down, because this is one movie where you are meant to be able to see the strings.

In short, if you are a huge fan of Southpark, you will probably enjoy seeing this film at the box office, however if the type of humor that Southpark portrays offends you or turns you off, you are probably better off not ever checking out this movie.