The Tenth Annual Mutant Awards: 2007

Team America: World Police

MONTAGE! Is there any other word that more stirs the blood, that better gives voice to the fire and passion of all that is good in each of us? The answer, of course, is no. A combination of the French words "mon" (meaning "a musical number") and "tage" (literally, "to kick ass by"), the montage has been a proud movie tradition since Charlie Chaplin first became "The giant, muscular tramp who can absolutely share our food, yes sir" in 1929. Since then, it's been an unwritten Hollywood rule: whether your film is about sports, animals, or animals who play sports, you'd better have a musical training number in there somewhere. But of the literally trillions of montages seen on the silver screen over the years (five in To Kill A Mockingbird alone), which training scene reigns supreme? Let's see what you had to say…

It's a sad day when The Boy Who Lived can't beat out Val Kilmer, but that's just what happened when only 5.2% of voters apiece chose Val training his brain in Real Genius and Potter training his army of goody-goodies in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Jennifer Grey fared slightly better (7.3%) at learning to tango in the face of rampant attempts to put her in a corner in Dirty Dancing, and it seems I'm not the only one who likes watching aging drunks get sloshed with college students, as Beerfest staggered away with 8.1%. Speaking of incompetent slobs, the Mystery Men showed 11.3% of us that only when goofballs screwing up amuses us can we hope to find hilarity in the sight of screwballs goofing up. And on a more serious note, Daniel-san learning to paint the fence showed 9.3% of children of the 80s how to reach for their dreams (and us swimmers how to properly do the backstroke).

But in the end, it came down to only two contestants. Everyone's favorite bruiser Rocky walked away (or rather, jogged through South Philly) with a moral victory, racking up a whopping 27% of your votes. But unfortunately for all those who love to eat lightning and crap thunder, those votes were split between the tutelage of Apollo Creed in Rocky III and the egg-drinkin', meat-poundin' ferocity of the original's training sequence, which set the stage for so very many to come. And thus it comes to pass that your duly elected greatest montage of all time is… the "Montage" song from Team America: World Police. It's hard to argue with the people's decision: for all that we tend to accept them without question, all movie montages are pretty much the same, and the immensely satirical self-deprecation of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's last movie really hammered that point home. It also illuminated one other valuable tip, that if you're ever stuck for a catchy tune for your action movie parody, just reuse a song you created for your hit TV show, in this case the "Asspen" episode of South Park. Thanks, guys!

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