Team America: World Police is a madcap concept: lampoon America’s current war-frenzied culture with marionettes. Who would possibly want to watch such a film?

On the film’s surface, the very appearance of the marionettes, being pulled by someone else’s invisible strings, seems to have some symbolic value. Or maybe they just thought it would be funny to have puppets do things that no puppets should ever do.

The movie also a throwback to Thunderbirds, a futuristic series produced in 1965 that heavily utilized “supermarionation,” which used marionettes suspended and controlled by thin wires. In that series, the marionettes were played with deadly seriousness, despite the fact that they were, you know, puppets. You have to ask why creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone would want to use a technique few people remember from the sixties…unless they were making a statement about an era that also happened to involve an unpopular war. Ahem.

It’s very easy to dismiss Team America as farcical garbage, a lewd, violent attack on every sacred crow conceivable. And on the surface, Team America can be appreciated for that alone: a conservative organization that espouses American values with unabashed patriotism sends Team America to blow up bad guys while destroying the homes and artifacts of the people they’re trying to save; a liberal nutjob (Michael Moore) turns into a suicide bomber; Kim Jong Il really IS part of an axis of evil manipulating terrorists to blow up the world; actors with no experience in warfare speak out about the war, forming the Film Actors Guild (FAG); and a struggling actor named Gary is recruited from a Broadway musical that sounds suspiciously like Rent. Nobody is safe in Team America.

But anyone who watches South Park knows that Parker and Stone are far shrewder than their “supercrappymation” might lead one to believe. They are the deconstructionists of our age, fearlessly criticizing hypocrites everywhere, whatever their political, global, or religious affiliation might be. Only these two would compare a Middle-Eastern bar to the cantina from Star Wars…because frankly that’s about the most exposure Americans have ever had to Middle-Eastern cultures. Heck, even the title “World Police” is laden with assumptions about America’s global responsibility or lack thereof. Even Matt Damon, whom Parker and Stone think is actually a pretty cool guy, gets turned into a monosyllabic thug. Trust me, he got off easy.

They never let you forget that this is all done with puppets too: real black cats are substituted for panthers, puppets slap each other helplessly in some pathetic approximation of a fist-fight, and two opponents slow down and spin in the air as they face off, Matrix-style…all with the help of their marionette strings. And I don’t need to mention what the puppets do to/with each other in the bedroom…

There are also parts that are a little dated. Yes, making fun of Ben Affleck in Pearl Harbor is always fun, but it dates the film. Rent’s also an easy target…but does anyone really care that much about Rent to make fun of it?

Team America takes the shotgun approaching, mowing down anything and everything with a no holds barred approach that spares no one. If you take yourself a little too seriously, chances are you’ll find this movie offensive or irrelevant. But if you aren’t afraid to laugh at the inanities of the modern world, as viewed through the seriously warped lens of big-budget action movies, then you’ll probably enjoy Team America: World Police as a hilarious romp through a decade our descendants will most assuredly find amusing.