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Which brings us to 2004, when the creators of the first cartoon to almost start World War III decided to appropriate the look for their new movie. Team America opens the only way an action movie about puppets CAN open, which is a shot of a marionette using a marionette. We’re in France, that magical place that has mimes and the Eiffel Tower and where it’s okay to drink wine at nine in the morning. A group of obvious Islamic terrorists attempt to exchange what is obviously a nuclear bomb in a briefcase. Before they can, a set of red white and blue attack vehicles arrive, and Team America eliminates the threat, along with every significant landmark in Paris. They lose a member during the battle, an event that sows deep seeds of division in the group. When it becomes clear the “terrorists” (the word is used in what I assume is an intentionally generic way) intend to strike back, Team America must replace their fallen man with a new one. But he’ll be forced to call upon to use the full range of his acting skills (they decide to hire a real actor to “act” his way behind enemy lines) to unravel the deadly plot that threatens to tear apart the world, and more importantly, Team America itself.

Did you already forget that it’s about puppets? It sounds like a pretty standard action potboiler, and it is. Only, it’s delivered in the faintly cerebral-but-mostly-sophomoric way you used to love every week on South Park - until you finally grew up. It’s not that I can’t appreciate the shout out to a syndicated television show that once horrified me as a child. And it’s not that I have a problem with hot, steamy puppet sex. And I absolutely appreciate the movie’s willingness to target everyone, from left to right, in an attempt to illustrate how quick most of us are to give in to emotional extremes in times of national peril. Yeah, I get it. It’s just that when you leave yourself no boundaries of any kind, lack of restraint begins to look like lack of judgment.

Team America actually does a fairly decent job of making its point, but Parker and Stone’s propensity to push boundaries in a self conscious way results in an uneven experience that’s about 80 percent dick jokes punctuated by a few moments of brilliance. If that's good enough for you, then so be it. But whether you think they’re geniuses or extremely talented morons, I’d say the duo have their best work still ahead of them (translation: they can do better). Team America is yet another one of those movies that deserves to be seen simply because of its novelty, and I tend to like these kinds of movies as much as any other. It usually means that whether the project succeeds or fails, someone made a genuine effort to break new ground, and that’s something that doesn’t happen often enough in Hollywood.

And if that's not enough, former North Korean dictator/psychotic human tater-tot Kim Jong Il has a musical number you'll be giggling about for days.

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