Saving with sex and satire

A puppet satire on America's war on terror? An unlikely project, perhaps. But South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone cut the mustard pretty well, even if there are more references to dick, pussy and assholes than political analysis, and no mention of Dubya and his cohorts at all. Its heart, though, is in roughly the right place.

The world police of the title lay waste to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Pyramids and the Sphinx on the way to saving America, finally engaging a Broadway star to help collapse the machinations of North Korean dictator Kim Jong II.

The wobbly puppets are all the better for not having celebrity voices. But the recognisable figure of Michael Moore is there, blowing himself up trying to save the world, as are the cuckolded celebrities of Alec Baldwin's Film Actors Guild, who believe every word Kim Jong says about world peace.

Team America is, in fact, much nastier to the liberals than to the gung-ho conservatives it is supposed to send up. Funny, however, it often is, provided you don't mind the throwaway sexual gags.

Team America: World Police
Cert: 15