This is the latest instalment in our From the Vault feature series, in which we reflect on culturally significant movies celebrating notable anniversaries.
For 30 years, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have delighted in wrong-footing audiences. Besides running the foul-mouthed animation since 1997, they are also responsible for the 1993 film Cannibal! The Musical and the 2011 stage smash hit The Book of Mormon.
So perhaps it should have come as no surprise that they decided to follow 1999’s box-office hit South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut by making a puppet movie – with songs – spoofing American foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq war.
Released 20 years ago this month, Team America: World Police was directed by Parker and written by Parker, Stone and regular collaborator Pam Brady.
It overcame troubled production and censorship issues to achieve cult status. But whether it was worth it for the filmmakers – Parker told the LA Times it was “the hardest thing we’ve ever done” – is another matter.
The idea evolved from the pair watching the 1960s British children’s TV show Thunderbirds. Although they did not rate the show, they found the awkward marionettes and po-faced dialogue funny.