TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE

PREMIERES FRI., OCT. 15

WATCHING THE TRAILER to this new flick from the creators of South Park—featuring Thunderbirds-esque action puppets facing off against contemporary pop and political figures (Kim Jong Il, Michael Moore) in miniaturized sets—all I could think of was that line by P. J. O'Rourke: "middle-class nihilism." There's enough eye-row-knee in just this tiny 60-second preview clip to feed an entire college dorm.

A lot of things about the preview to Team America tweak the pancreas, particularly its sneery college-radio DJ tone. You just know that if Trey Parker and Matt Stone were a few years younger, they would have started one of those we-don't-take-ourselves-too-seriously 80s college-radio joke bands like They Might Be Giants. You could snicker along with them because you're in on their snotty little jokes. Like the joke at the end of the preview, when the tough-girl action-puppet delivers a clichéd one-liner before blasting away: "Hey terrorists! Terrorize this!" Even the sad fools on Saturday Night Live have parodied this 80s-era one-liner action cliché... but you just know that Stone and Parker have a built-in safety device that allows them to respond, "Yeah, that's the whole joke. Tee-hee! The joke is that we're making fun of a bad parody of a bad cliché. Tuh-tee-hee-hee!"

What's worse is the whole nihilism balancing-act that Stone and Parker hide behind. See, at first Team America seems to be an anti-Bush movie, mocking current Republican lunacy… But wait a minute, they also attack leftie-hero Michael Moore! You see, they hate both sides of the spectrum. Hey, are we entering a "no bullshit" zone or what, folks?! I guess you would call this "above-the-fray" nihilism.

In fact, their nihilism balancing act—rooted in the affected anti-politically correct quasi-libertarianism endemic to the late Clinton era—serves one purpose: to protect Stone/Parker from being sneered at by other sneerers. Exposing themselves to fellow sneerers is the one thing clever college-radio DJs like Stone and Parker fear the way Frankenstein's monster fears fire. So in the end what you have is a product screaming out loud that it doesn't take itself too seriously—a lie, of course, because the force of their collective ego imposing its sneer-fears on the audience could rip the roof off of a Florida trailer home.

Despite their dated, Clinton-era nihilism, I have to admit it was kind of fun watching Kim Jong Il as an evil puppet villain. And supposedly Team America features musical numbers along the lines of Bigger, Longer & Uncut, which is what separates that fine movie from the cheap nihilism of South Park's early tv episodes. So yeah, given the options, I'll probably go and see this movie. Even squeaky college-radio DJs play good music sometimes.

MARK AMES