American Caustic

American Caustic
by Ed Owens

“There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.”
-- G.K. Chesterton

A close look at the rating tag for Team America: World Police lists the following as the reasons for its R rating: “"graphic, crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language, all involving puppets." Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone actually had to cut the film, particularly a marionette sex scene, in order to get the R (the film originally got slapped with a dreaded NC-17). CNN, Fox News, and the UK 's Guardian all carried stories about the ratings dispute, and the best quote came from producer Scott Rudin: “If the puppets did to each other what we show them doing, all they would have gotten was splinters.”

In case you missed it, “graphic, crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language, ALL INVOLVING PUPPETS.”

The absurdity of the ratings battle (apparently the MPAA had no problem with the violence, which is quite graphic at times) is matched by the absurdity of the film itself, an over-the-top actioner straight out of Bruckheimer's playbook made funny by the combination of clever writing and the sheer fact that it involves puppets (marionettes, to be precise). Team America borrows more than technique from its obvious predecessor, the British TV series “Thunderbirds.” The emergency response team comprised of the Tracy family in the original series has been replaced by an international police force consisting mainly of American super-agents who respond to global crises from their headquarters inside a hollowed-out Mt. Rushmore. Parker and Stone use that basic premise as a launching ground for a range of socio-political criticisms, few of which will be lost in the currently heated political climate. In the world of the filmmakers, the current incarnation of the American dream is an absurdly perverse one in which the world's would-be saviors do more damage than the terrorists they seek to thwart.

One of the film's strengths is that no one is spared -- as demonstrated in their long-running TV series South Park, Parker and Stone recognize the absurdities on both sides of the political fence, as well as the inherent silliness of political correctness taken to extremes (a word of caution: the film is an equal opportunity offender with something sure to make even the most jaded of moviegoers cringe even as they laugh…or don't).

Some of the laughs come from the limitations of the medium itself, such as a heart-felt speech accentuated by an awkwardly coordinated hand gesture. Rather than attempting to smooth out the rough edges of the process, Stone and Parker repeatedly call attention to them, perhaps explaining why they coined the term “crapination” instead of “marionation,” the technical term for the use of marionettes in films and shorts. As is to be expected, the humor is hit or miss, ranging from subtle to sophomoric (sometimes even in the same scene), but the film hits more often than it misses, and I frequently found myself laughing in spite of myself. As with South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, some of the best moments are the original songs (the filmmakers even play on the recycling of songs with the down tempo version of Team America 's theme song, aptly titled “America (Fuck Yeah)--Bummer Remix"). The picture occasionally goes too far over the top (or too low, in the case of Parker & Stone's seeming obsession with oral sex), but Team America does a better job of sustaining itself than the aforementioned South Park . Besides, nothing in the film compares to the ultimate absurdity of the filmmakers' ratings battle with the MPAA over a sex scene…involving puppets.

While Team America skewers the geopolitical aesthetic, Friday Night Lights has smaller fish to fry, though no less critical of the American dream. Director Peter Berg, no stranger to alternative takes on the American ideal (his directorial debut was the viciously funny dark comedy Very Bad Things), adapts the 1991 novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist H.G. Bissinger about the football-obsessed community of Odessa, Texas. An oil town with high unemployment rates during bad times (and skyrocketing murder rates during good ones), Odessa pins most of its hopes and dreams on the Permian Panthers, the winningest high-school football team in Texas history.

Focusing on the 1988 season, the film (and the book) is less a standard narrative than a snapshot of a community in crisis, a town living on a steady diet of past glory and future victory -- a pressure cooker where a loss results in For Sale signs being planted all around the coach's front lawn. Rather than the glorified accomplishments of the underdog films to which it's being compared (Remember the Titans and Hoosiers have featured prominently in several reviews), Friday Night Lights takes an unflinching look beneath the glamour only hindsight can provide, focusing on the harsh realities of a place whose heroes are still 17 (one player remarks, “I don't feel 17”) and whose identity is forged almost exclusively in the fires of high school athletics.

The film trots out the usual sports film conventions -- the underdog team, the overzealous parents, the Big Game -- but Berg here uses them largely to contrarian effect. When a college recruiter asks quarterback Mike Winchell if he enjoys playing football, the answer is a hesitant “Yes sir,” uttered more out of obligation than honesty (Berg later visually reinforces Winchell's response and the implicit sense of loss inherent in it). The Big Game carries with it all of the usual tension and excitement, but one can't help but wonder if it really matters (many of the community's members are former state champions themselves, peddling the promise of football as a way out even as they live out the bleak realities of never having left). This is not to say that the film is entirely bleak and uncompromising -- it inspires many of the same urges to root and cheer as its more light-hearted compatriots -- but it does temper those urges, calling attention to the uglier side of such impulses (for someone to win, somebody else has to lose).

The performances are uniformly good, if not great, a difficult task given the film's focus on the community rather than individual characters. Relative newcomer Derek Luke shines in the flashiest role as the team's star running back Boobie Miles, but the other actors are no less impressive even if they are more understated. Billy Bob Thornton as Coach Gaines and Lucas Black as the aforementioned QB both turn in performances that hinge on the little things such as expressions and deliveries. The film's big find lies in the volatile relationship between Charles Billingsley and his son (played by country singer Tim McGraw and Garrett Hedlund respectively). Both actors, despite their relative inexperience, manage to strike near perfect notes, playing off each other with a familiarity that would be hard to achieve after years of working together, much less over the course of a single production.

Friday Night Lights is less of an immediate success than the kind of film that sticks with you long afterwards. Many will surely reject its bleaker take on the sports genre, but Berg's subtle handling makes it well worth considering, an alternative view of the dream that seeks not to completely replace the ideal, but make it more real.