By ELLIOTT DONNER

Staff Writer

This spoof comedy from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, a mature cartoon on Comedy Central, has a wooden puppet cast you would think is harmless, but the movie contains some of the most crude and offensiveÊscenes of the year.

The vulgarity of the movie isn't really a problem, but Parker and Stone push their boundaries just like they always do in South Park.

Appearing to poke fun at stupid action movies as well as the War on Terrorism and movie stars who speak out against the war, Parker and Trey have outdone themselves by reaching new lows of bigotry and mean-spirited nonsense.

If you think vomiting is funny, enjoy graphic language, and you get turned on by watching puppets have sex, don't miss this one.

The plot of "Team America: World Police" doesn't take many brain cells to figure out.

It's about an aggressive international police force trying to rid the world of terrorists but doing more damage by their actions than the terrorists themselves.

The main team is a five-man death squad on a global mission to wipe out terrorists. Their methods of finding terrorists consist of either landing their star-spangled vehicles in foreign places and wasting everything they see, or walking into seedy bars dressed in fake turbans and asking, "Say, do you guys know where we can find some terrorists?"

The main character, Gary, is a Broadway star who has amazing thespian talent.

He is haunted by the memory of a childhood incident in which a performance led to his brother's death in a gorilla cage at the zoo.

The team also includes Lisa, a master of the human mind with psychology training from Princeton; Joe, a roughneck college football prodigy; Chris, the No. 1 martial artist in Detroit; Sarah, a telepathic hottie; and the boss Spottswoode, who replies to Gary's gasp of "Now I've seen everything," with "Really? Have you ever seen a man eat his own head?"

Along with these hilarious terrorist-catching tactics, the film's hysterically weak parts, where characters have ridiculous car chases, gunfights and kung-fu duels, are all delivered with straight faces that only blocks of carved wood could make.

The straight face of Chuck Norris is almost real.

This movie was surely the strangest creation from Parker and Stone ever.

But two thumbs up for the creativity and all around hilarious mockery.

There is one problem with the movie. If kids happen to get in to see "Team America," there are going to be plenty of parents who will have a lot of explaining to do.

Some graphic parts of the movie were taken out, making the "NC-17" rating drop down to an "R" rating.