Moviephile

Well, Halloween is over - and, rather to my surprise, rather than getting the 70 trick-or-treaters we had last year, we had five. Five??! Come on! Not that I’m complaining about having all this candy left around the house… but seriously…!

We have this backlog of Hammer movies to watch now, but I’m not sure we’re going to attempt that until next Halloween. I’m kind of want to just finish them since we’ve got them here - and plus, the last one was pretty interesting - so, hm, I don’t know. I’m rambling… I’d better get back to the point of this post.

We have our election-day viewing all mapped-out. We’re going to watch Team America: World Police, You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown, and the “Vote or Die” episode of South Park. (”Vote or Die” is not the actual title of the episode; the actual title is a bit too crude for me to share with you).

Team America: World Police is the spawn of South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. This is a very, very bizarre film: namely because Matt and Trey decided that - rather than animate it, or actually have live-action actors - it would be a puppet movie. They used marionettes to make this movie. Don’t get me wrong - it’s hilarious - but also terrifying and disgusting in many different ways. (Of course, I believe that was the intention.)

It’s the story of “Team America”, a group of “world police” (perhaps you could have gathered that much from the title) who go around stopping terrorism. They recruit an actor to the team to help stop a big terrorist action, and things spin out of control from there. They not only battle North Korea, but also the Screen Actor’s Guild (which is called the Film Actor’s Guild in the film. If you look at the initials of that name - this is the level of humor you can expect.)

This is a very funny movie, very political, very strong, and has an excellent and hilarious score; the theme song, America, ***k Yeah! is a classic. However, if it isn’t obvious, this movie is NOT recommended for children - or even young teens - on account of the strong language, innappropriate humor, graphic violence, and graphic sex scenes (well, I guess they’re only graphic in intent: the puppets naked, but are not anatomically correct).

This film was something of a box-office flop, possibly because people didn’t know what to expect when going to see it - or maybe just because people were perplexed that it starred puppets. Or maybe it was the (unintentionally) conservative message that the movie promoted. Oh well! It was probably a number of different factors. I still think that anyone of any political stance could enjoy the movie if they were open-minded and enjoyed seeing marionettes fight.

You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown, our other pick, is one of the lesser Charlie Brown cartoons. The title is a little bit of a stretch, since Charlie Brown doesn’t run for office: according to wikipedia, it was originally “You’re Elected, Charlie Brown” - but they changed it when they realized that title made even less sense.

Personally, I think that It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Christmas are the only ones that are really worth owning: the others are less coherent, and don’t have scores that are as enjoyable. I also found the ones that  emphasized romances between the children a little creepy. The one where Charlie Brown has to kiss the little red-headed girl - or the one where Peppermint Patty sings “Poor Sweet Baby” to Charlie Brown - were irritating and gross to me as a child. I’m kind of tempted, though, to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving this year, as I only saw it once as a child, and don’t remember the details very clearly.

But I’m really digressing from the topic of You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown: if you buy a copy of this, try to buy the one that is a double-feature with Great Pumpkin, because it’s not worth buying on its own. It may be good election-day viewing, though, since either way somebody isn’t getting elected on the 4th. I’m not making a prediction this year about who will win because there are too many new factors to consider… We shall see.

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