10 Things We Love about Team America on its 10th Anniversary

By Courtney Enlow | Lists | October 15, 2014 |

By Courtney Enlow | Lists | October 15, 2014 |

10. Puppet sex almost landed it an NC-17.

The infamous puppet sex scene, which is, again, sex featuring puppets, originally got the movie rated NC-17. The uncut version was restored for the DVD.

Um, this is NSFW unless you work in a…puppet…fucking…place, I don’t know.

Bonus fun fact: the actress who plays Lisa is Kristen Miller, who also played Princess on the short-lived Parker and Stone sitcom That’s My Bush and Ashley on the teen show no one remembers but me, USA High.

9. It could have been a lot different.

Parker and Stone have said their original hope was just to remake the movie The Day After Tomorrow with puppets.

8. It has layers.

It’s a parody of a summer blockbuster, a stunning indictment of American culture and an over-the-top send-up of Hollywood activism. And it’s basically an optical illusion—depending on how you look at it, it’s either a racist shock-value-driven offendathon, or its stereotypical depiction of other countries further upends Hollywood culture and the way other countries appear in Bay-esque action flicks. And it does it all with fucking puppets.

For the record, much like in the famous “Osama Bin Laden Has Fartypants” post-9/11 episode of South Park only the terrorists speak gibberish. Regular citizens speak real Arabic.

7. You’ve never seen acting this good.

6. There’s three kinds of people…

5. Try as James Franco and Seth Rogen might, this will forever be the best takedown of a North Korean dictator.

4. The songs are hysterical parodies of action movie anthems and ballads…

Also, and I cannot seem to confirm this online, but I’d bet my wine that the version of “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf that plays in the movie is actually performed by Trey Parker.

3. But they’re also actually beautiful and amazing.

2. It nearly killed Matt and Trey.

We need to love it and adore it and praise it. Because, dammit, Matt and Trey earned it.

“It was the worst time of my entire life - I never want to see a puppet again,” Stone told The Sun Online. “It ruined all the serious relationships in my life. You just become a different person, get completely stressed out and don’t pay attention to anything else.

“You work 20 hours a day, take sleeping pills to go to bed and drink coffee to stay up. You feel like a piece of s**t, none of your friends like you, your parents don’t like you, but you have a movie at the end.”

1. Matt Damon.

For the record, Matt and Trey like Matt Damon. But, apparently, the puppet came out…different than they intended. From Matt Damon himself:

“I thought it was brilliant! I mean, I never understood it, and then I heard an interview with them and they said the puppet came in looking kind of mentally deficient and they didn’t have time to change it, so they just made me someone who could really only say his own name. All the comedy they’re doing is really next-level stuff. Also, I liked being included as a person who was against the Iraq war.”

Happy anniversary, Team America. I treasure your friendship.