TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE (2004). The spectacle halfway through Team America of a down-and-out Gary Johnston, all 22 inches of him, tossing his cookies for the fourth time epitomizes the work of Trey Parker and Matt Stone at its best. There aren't enough such moments, unfortunately. Their epic (at one-third scale) lacks some of the anarchic genius that has given us Mr. Hankie and the Christmas Poo and put Saddam Hussein in Hell as Satan's gay lover. After a "successful" Paris mission in which Team America blasts Osama bin Laden puppets in Paris but also the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, the Team's creepy head, Spottswoode, recruits actor Johnson to infiltrate the terrorist cells. Johnston's acting convinces almost everyone, from the Chechen warlord harboring WMDs in a Cairo bar to fellow Team members Lisa and Sarah, who are smitten by his charms. But he hasn't convinced himself, especially when the successful Cairo mission results in a terrorist attack on the Panama Canal. Johnston quits and goes on a bender, leaving the others to the devices of the real puppeteer: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. Toward the end, Team America becomes a test of how much you enjoy the sight of Tim Robbins being burnt to death or a gun-toting Janeane Garofalo getting her brains blown out. In better times, those of all ideological persuasions might chuckle at such excess and (one hopes) irony. Until then, you might prefer the comic purity of a vomiting puppet. (105m)

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