Jodie Foster's Favorite Movie Is A Controversial Comedy That's Celebrating Its 20th Anniversary

Jodie Foster's career has been famously wild. As a child, she appeared in lightweight Disney films like "Napoleon and Samantha" and "Freaky Friday," while also taking the world by surprise playing an underage sex worker in Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver." Throughout the 1980s, she successfully continued acting as she grew, appearing in films like "Foxes," "The Hotel New Hampshire," and "The Accused," for which she won her first Academy Award. In 1991, Foster won her second Oscar for playing FBI cadet Clarice Starling in Jonathan Demme's bleak serial killer thriller "The Silence of the Lambs," one of the few films to win "The Big Five" Oscars (Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Director, and Picture). That same year, Foster made her directorial debut with the child-prodigy drama "Little Man Tate."

From then on, Foster was a Hollywood staple, leading multiple high-profile studio dramas like "Maverick," Robert Zemeckis' "Contact," and "Anna and the King." She also worked with David Fincher on "Panic Room" and with Spike Lee on "Inside Man." In 2007, Foster finally came out, acknowledging her partner of 12 years, and that they were raising kids together, becoming an even more visible queer icon. In 2011, she directed a sweet and odd psychological drama called "The Beaver" with her "Maverick" co-star Mel Gibson. Most recently, Foster appeared in the 2023 Netflix biopic "Nyad" and in the fourth season of "True Detective." Damn, what an impressive run.

In 2023, Foster was interviewed by Greta Lee in Interview Magazine, and Foster spoke a little bit about her favorite movies. When Lee, the star of "Past Lives," asked Foster which movie everyone should see at least once, her answer was startling. She initially mentioned that everyone should see "Everything Everywhere All at Once," which was still in theaters at the time, but then proceeded to recommend the 2004 puppet-based spoof film "Team America: World Police." Yes, seriously.

"Team America: World Police" was conceived by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the masterminds behind "South Park" and, more recently, the revived Mexican restaurant experience Casa Bonita. Stone and Parker were big fans of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's 1965 puppet-based adventure series "Thunderbirds," and were inspired to make their own puppet movie when they learned, quite disappointingly, that the then-upcoming 2002 "Thunderbirds" feature film adaptation (the one directed by Jonathan Frakes) was going to feature live actors.

This was also shortly after 9/11, at a time when the George W. Bush administration was clumsily starting wars in the Middle East. The tone of American political discourse was, in Stone and Parker's eyes, becoming too violent and jingoistic, with American politicians declaring themselves to be freelance global cops. "Team America: World Police" riffed on that jingoism, depicting a team of American super-soldiers whose tactics are thoughtless and destructive; at the beginning of the film, the puppet characters blow up the Louvre just to execute one fleeing terrorist. Kim Jong Il is the film's villain, and it features multiple songs. "Team America" is crass and absurd, but it's wise in its open mockery of deplorable Bush II-era politics.

When asked about her favorite film, Jodie Foster was quick to mention it, saying:

"Oh, and this is probably number one: the puppet movie 'Team America: World Police.' [...] A sense of humor is my touchstone, and I have a very dumb sense of humor. Sometimes with actors, even in the most dramatic circumstances, I like to laugh with them. I like to laugh about really intense things."

"Team America" tried to get laughs out of America's tendency toward international violence, emerging as cynical and sardonic. It's hardly a sophisticated movie — it featured a scene of puppets peeing on each other — but one can see a unique fratpunk energy in "Team America." Perhaps, it posits, we can survive by being detached and sarcastic.

Given that Foster's directorial efforts have been gentle, sensitive characters who need a lot of aid to cope with their unique, sometimes tragic situations, it's a little shocking to hear her talk so highly about "Team America," a flippant film with barfing puppets that was panned by some critics. (Roger Ebert felt that Parker and Stone were unfocused in their criticism, hitting so hard at both the Left and the Right that the film emerged without a point of view beyond its middle finger.)

In "Team America," the titular fighting force is opposed openly by a cadre of Left-leaning Hollywood stars, led by, perhaps randomly, Alec Baldwin. The Hollywood actors meet in a shadowy room and talk about how they will undermine Team America by merely repeating opinions they read in recent magazines and generally being self-righteous. Janeane Garofalo, Matt Damon, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Michael Sheen, and many others take it on the chin. Foster, it seems, was spared. Stone and Parker appear to feel that outspoken Lefty actors are somehow just as bad as Kim Jong Il. It's a clunky message based on false equivalencies.

Foster is a filmmaker, though, and she also may have been responding to something at the core of "Team America." Just as much and anything, "Team America" is a spoof of hack blockbuster director Michael Bay. Bay, possessing a powerful military fetish, makes broadly ludicrous action films that care more about being "awesome" than themes, dialogue, character, or even basic logic. When Bay tries to be emotional, it's only ever mawkish, and he seems incapable of saying anything meaningful. Indeed, "Team America" even features a tragic love song that begins with the lyric, "I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made 'Pearl Harbor.'"

"Team America," for however silly it may be, is fascinating. Perhaps we should take Foster's advice and watch it again.