Team America: World Police

Film Threat Rory L. Aronsky

Laugh hard, laugh long, but just laugh at true greatness. Parker and Stone have done it again, multiplied millions of times.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Wickedly funny and devilishly subversive. It is satire at its most fearless.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Who's going to love it? Anyone with a sense of humor: Team America: World Police is hands-down the funniest movie of the year.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

Bottom line: It's hilarious, vicious, offensive, thoroughly profane and a joy to watch, just like you'd expect. Be sure to sit through the end credits for a bonus song from Kim Jong-il to Alec Baldwin.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A ruthlessly clever musical, a punchy political parody and the hottest look ever at naked puppets -- the first film, porn included, in which a woody is actually made of wood.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

It turns out that puppets can tell us more about who we are as a nation than the most meticulous documentary. In Team America: World Police, the potty-mouthed, crazily brilliant musical from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the result is hilarious, shocking and bound to offend nearly everyone.

Washington Post Hank Stuever

This is all terrifically nasty and shocking stuff.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Clever comedians that they are, they have also rigged Team America with an ingenious anti-critic device, which I find myself unable to defuse. Much as it may pretend otherwise, the movie has an argument, but if you try to argue back, the joke's on you.

Slate David Edelstein

I laughed all the way through Team America: Scene by scene, it's uproarious.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The first hour of the movie struck me as being truly inspired, and I haven't laughed so hard all year.

USA Today Claudia Puig

When Team America works, it falls squarely into the category of guilty pleasure.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

I was amused more or less throughout by the ingeniously designed and executed stunt that is Team America.

Time Richard Corliss

The real kick, however, is in the grandeur and detail of the production design, by Jim Dultz and David Rockwell.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Years from now, Team America will better convey the political character of 2004 than a stack of Time magazines. Staying funny helps even more.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

There is no room for subtlety. Aiming a rude, foul-mouthed political satire everywhere -- left, right and center -- Trey Parker and Matt Stone blow up a good deal of the world, not to mention the egos of many Hollywood personalities

Variety Brian Lowry

Goes the extra mile to piss off everybody -- which includes gleefully destroying renowned Hollywood liberals, literally and figuratively.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

You're guaranteed never to have seen anything like it; objectively speaking, it's a wonder.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

Wisely unbiased-but also unfocused, uneducated, and underachieving-which makes for an occasionally hilarious, frequently anemic parody that misses its opportunity to permanently document a scathing critique of current events.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Stuck between point-blank ridicule and the obligations of a weary plot. Surprisingly, more than an hour of watching marionettes fight, curse, and fornicate turns out to be as dull as watching Michael Dudikoff do the same thing in one of his unremarkable soldier movies.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Give it an A for concept -- a bizarre marionette version of a Jerry Bruckheimer-style action movie; B for its occasional moments of convulsively funny comedy; and D for the politics, for pandering to exactly the kind of reactionary sentiments it purports to satirize.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This movie is more of a curiosity than a fully formed motion picture.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Bits can be extremely funny. I howled at the ranting, mustard-splotched, wiener-waving Michael Moore.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Egregiously vulgar satire on terrorism, global politics and Hollywood action movies gets an immeasurable boost from its wonderfully designed, old-school string puppets.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The puppets are anatomically correct and politically incorrect. They provide 45 of the funniest minutes I've spent at the movies this year.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

Team America's strengths are in its musical numbers, especially Kim Jong Il's mournful "I'm So Ronery" (translation: "Lonely"), a heartfelt peek into the dictator's soul.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

I know this sounds like great fun, and some of it is, but there's nowhere near enough good stuff to fill the 114-minute running time.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Accomplished yet uneven feature.

Empire Kim Newman

It makes for a patchy comedy that's stronger as a genre-mocker than a political satire.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The result is undeniably offensive and occasionally very funny, but the gags fall flat as often as they hit their mark.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This is hysterically funny in parts, but most of the laughs are raunchy or scatological--always a sure bet when puppets are involved.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The net effect is a barrage of jokes that strain to be outrageous - just as the marionette gimmick strives to be different - but wind up canceling each other out.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Juvenile yet compellingly smart humor.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Proves that marionettes can be as foul-mouthed and profane as their cartoon counterparts, but not nearly as clever.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Team America is at once grandiose and tacky, elaborate and deflationary.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Team America, for all its outrageousness, is the first work from Parker and Stone that I'd describe as a failure of nerve.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Surprisingly, the results are embarrassing. As puppetry, Team America is stilted. As satire, it's gutless and lazy. And as comedy, it barely delivers laughs.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Like a cocky teenager who's had a couple of drinks before the party, they don't have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible.