“9/11 x 100?”
“Yes. 91,100!”
This is, essentially, exactly like
an episode of South Park, only
longer, more cinematic, with different characters and with puppets instead of
animation. As my girlfriend pointed out, you can even recognise the voices. It’s
clever, though: Matt Stone and Trey Parker have essentially taken the standard
Hollywood plot (Protagonist is really good at something. Protagonist suffers
personal crisis and loses mojo. Protagonist gets mojo back and saves the day.)
and South Parked it up.
The opening scene is well clever:
a bit of rubbish puppetry is slowly revealed to be puppetry within the film.
The actual puppets are deliberately made to look as Gerry Anderson as possibly,
right down to the strings,the lack of genitals and the way they walk. Every
possible drop of humour is wrung out of this, from the puppet sex scene (just
look at all those positions!) to the fight scenes. Specially the fight scenes. The
puppet kung fu just killed me.
Obviously this film can’t avoid
being deeply political, considering what it’s about, but there doesn’t seem to
be any particular ideological subtext being pushed here, just equal opportunity
piss taking. Gung-ho right-wing All-American chauvinism gets well and truly
skewered, but so do left-wing Hollywood celebrities who think that being able
to act gives them some sort of political role. I realise that the absence of any
obvious political viewpoint usually indicates a passive sort of conservatism,
but I’m a Guardian reader and I love
this film.
I appreciated the Mos Eisley
touches to the tavern (although of course a bunch of teetotal Islamic
fundamentalists would probably not go anywhere near such a place),but then I’m
a geek. I love the songs, particularly “Montage”, which completely skewers any
number of Hollywood movies, and, of course, “Pearl Harbor Sucks, and I Miss You”,
which is so, so true. But the film is dominated by the real life Bond villain
that was the late Kim Jong l, who, bizarrely, was a massive film buff and
probably saw this movie. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall…
Personally,I love this movie.
Whether or not you do will depend on whether or not you like South Park.
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