Guns don't kill puppets. Puppets kill puppets.

If you ever thought marionettes could do a better job of running the world than humans . . . well, you’d be wrong in a really big way. But there’s no denying that they can get big laughs by doing things that it probably wouldn’t be funny at all to see real people do. Things like knock over the Eiffel Tower, fight kittens and have sex.

I never thought I’d go to a movie by the folks who brought us "South Park" because, well, I hate "South Park." But Team America: World Police lured me in with its silly puppets and its political satire, and for at least half the movie it was worth it.

The set-up: they’re puppets.

What, you want more? Okay. Have you ever seen Thunderbirds? It’s kind of like that. Team America is a group of highly trained, beautiful, young hard-bodies (seriously, they’re made of wood) who aim to save us from terrorists or kill us trying. Because they’re Americans, see, and that’s what we do. They need someone to go undercover, so they recruit an actor and . . .  oh hell, it really doesn’t matter. That’s all you need to know, plot-wise.

What you need to know thematically is that Team America creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone want desperately to offend you and odds are that at some point during the film, for however brief a moment, they will. Are you conservative? Ka-pow! Liberal? Bam! A fan of Rent? Whap! Are you, by chance, Matt Damon? Oh, Matt, honey, just stay away. But the thing is, being offended is rarely fatal. It’s not such a bad thing to have someone take your cherished beliefs and make merciless fun of them. If the belief is truly cherished, it can take it. And Parker and Stone are experts at punching out sacred cows, as they do here with our national self-image as the lone bastion of freedom in the world (best exemplified by the theme song, “America: Fuck Yeah!”) and our willingness to let celebrities tell us what we think. They also take pot shots at the emotional manipulation inherent in action movies and country music, and oh, I laughed.

"I'm not going to buy you any more North Korean guards until you learn to pick up the ones you have."

So (probably predictably) Team America worked for me while it was satirizing things I think need satirizing and lost me when it strayed from that. So sue me. I think jokes about simplistic appeals to shallow patriotism are funnier than “Hey, that guy might be gay,” or long conversations whose sole purpose seems to be that it’s funny to see puppets swear. (Well, it kind of is.) And some of the clichéd action-movie sub-plots drag into nearly as much tedium as those they’re making fun of. But there were a lot more big belly laughs in Team America than I had banked on, and for that it gets a nod. So, Team America: Yeah. In fact, Team America: Fuck yeah.

Gorilla Pants rating: 3 out of 4 bananas