(no subject)

[electricland]

monkeycommando and I went to see "Team America: World Police" last night.

Still trying to decide whether it was brilliant satire or utterly without redeeming qualities. Or possibly both.

I can tell you one thing, though: fun as the Montage Song was, it's no "Uncle Fucka".

Oh, and we got rear-ended on the way over. I seem to be OK though... monkeycommando? How you doing this morning?

Comments

[tylerpistol.livejournal.com]

I couldn't decide either. But I DID decide that onscreen marionette vomiting is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

My 2 cents

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

Hilarious but shallow. It's not a political satire, because the guys who made it don't know about politics and don't care. It's not a satire of right-wing politics or left-wing politics. It's a satire of right-wing movies from Hollywood and left-wing Hollywood stars.

[pretentiousgit.livejournal.com]

Brilliant and without redeeming qualities? Hot damn! Count me in!

[monkeycommando.livejournal.com]

A little tense between the should blades, but other than that I'm pretty okay, thanks.

Loved TA:WP, and I am trying to make a case elsewhere that the political message of TA:WP is that you'd have to be a moron to be interested in the political message of a puerile puppet action movie.

TA:WP is not a follow-up to South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, it's a follow-up to Terrence and Phillip: Asses of Fire (making it the third in the series, after Not Without My Anus).

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

Which is my point above. It's like a Quentin Tarentino movie: tremendous fun for the two hours you spend watching it, but completely shallow. Because the only sort of experience it relates to is other times you've sat in the dark watching movies.

[monkeycommando.livejournal.com]

Ahh, but I perceive a more profound depth to the superficial shallowness.

The flick is also artistically bold and mostly successful. At least that's what I think this hour

These kinds of straight faced satire films are notoriously difficult to do well, its tricky to get some aspects of the layered satire across to the general audience, and still be entertaining.

Total Recall and True Lies largely failed on that score, and Starship Troopers did only a little better.

I bet TAWP will read differently in a few years, (particularly if Schwarzenegger ever gets to run for Prez) and would have read much differently under, say, Reagan than it does under Bush.

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to try to imagine what this movie will look like a few years from now. (Especially since in my current emotional/political state anything that doesn't look like a vehement denunciation of Bush seems worthless.)

The comment about the Reagan era is pretty dead on -- because this movie is more about the 80s than about our current problems. More precisely, it's about the cheesy movies made in the 80s (how many times have you heard those same guitars from "(We need a) Montage"?

For real brilliant satire of our times, I think I need to make an exact shot-for-shot remake, using puppets, of Rambo III. That's the one where Rambo goes to Afghanistan to fight with Osama bin Laden and the mujahdeen.