south
park:
bigger, longer & uncut |
director
Trey Parker
screenwriters
Trey Parker
Matt Stone
Pam Brady
producers
Trey Parker
Matt Stone
music
Trey Parker
Marc Shaiman
editor
John Venzon
cast
Trey Parker (Stan, Cartman, Satan, Mr. Garrison,
Phillip, Ned, Mr. Mackey)
Matt Stone (Kyle, Kenny, Terrance, Saddam Hussein, Jimbo)
Mary Kay Bergman (Wendy, Mrs. Cartman, Sheila Broflovski,
Sharon Marsh, Clitoris)
Isaac Hayes (Chef)
George Clooney (Doctor)
Brent Spiner (Conan O'Brien)
Minnie Driver (Brooke Shields)
Dave Foley (Baldwin Brothers)
Eric Idle (Dr. Vosknocker)
Mike Judge (Kenny)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 81m
u.s.
release: 6/30/99
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other trey
parker films
reviewed on this website:
- orgazmo
- team
america: world police
see also:
- mr.
hankey's christmas classics
|
In
a comedy, a good strong beginning can win over the audience and
make up for some flab in the middle, and South Park: Bigger,
Longer & Uncut boasts perhaps the most uproarious first
reel in recent memory. Our heroes, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny,
have nabbed tickets to a hot Canadian film -- Terrance and Phillip
in Asses of Fire. As Terrance and Phillip cavort around,
farting copiously and blurting out words they can't say on TV,
and then as the boys leave the theater blurting out words they
can't say on Comedy Central, the audience laughter is like a
wall of sound. It's as if we were at a rock concert, with every
"suck my balls, you pigfuckin' son of a bitch" rolling
out like a killer drum solo; it's electrifying. We've heard the
boys talk R-rated trash before, in the South Park precursor
"The Spirit of Christmas," but what's fresh about it
here is the delirious sense of discovery, the long-forgotten
thrill of kids learning forbidden words and eagerly parroting
them again and again. Among other things, the South Park
movie restores the happy shock and exuberance of talking dirty.
The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone
(Parker directed, he and Stone wrote the script with the show's
creative producer Pam Brady), are accomplished parodists and
satirists. (Which are two different things. Some can do parody
and some can do satire, but very few can do both, and do them
well.) Some have said the show has lost steam lately, and the
pair's appearance in the poorly received BASEketball didn't
help their case, but this riotous and gleefully offensive outrage
should put them right back on top. The movie is a gigantic joke
on its audience and on itself; the audience in the film, watching
the crudely animated Asses of Fire, is not terribly different
from us. The film actually works on several levels, which Beavis
& Butt-Head Do America didn't, as rudely funny as
it was. Parker and Stone butcher all past critics of the show
and any future critics of the movie; arriving as it does like
a fart at the somber post-Columbine funeral, it's a sharp slap
of common sense.
When the boys go off spouting the wondrous new phrases they've
learned, their mothers react with predictable horror. The villain
of this piece isn't Satan or Saddam Hussein (both of whom appear,
spooning in Hell, awaiting their chance to take over the world);
it's Sheila Broflovski, Kyle's easily offended mom ("WhawhaWHAAT?"),
who spearheads an assault on Terrance and Phillip's homeland
of Canada. In outline, the movie may seem like a feature-length
reworking of the South Park episode "Death,"
wherein Kyle's mom took on the network showing T & P cartoons
(and the network exec, in answer to parental protests, uttered
the classic line "You can direct your complaints to that
brick wall over there"). But in form it's also a subversive
skewering of the MPAA, which finally gave this movie an R rating
(it had to be trimmed to avoid an NC-17) despite several mean
and very funny shots at them. What good, for instance, is a ratings
system that can be so easily circumvented by quick-thinking kids?
Indeed, sitting in the audience at South Park, you may
spot some kids who (as Parker and Stone pointed out in a recent
appearance on The Tonight Show) bought a ticket to Wild
Wild West and snuck into South Park, or just kids
whose parents were lazy or imbecilic enough to bring them.
Well, if those parents are faced with post-movie questions about
"donkey-raping shit-eaters" or clitorises, they deserve
it. South Park the show is not for kids, and South
Park the movie is not even for a lot of adults. There's one
cannon-fodder joke so stunningly cynical that many in the audience
will be too uncomfortable to laugh; yet the joke cuts to the
quick and makes its point more vividly than any op-ed column
could. Some will regret the usual Parker-Stone frat-boy homophobia,
represented here by dragging Big Gay Al onstage for a few queeny
minutes, and I wanted a little less of the Satan-Saddam romance
(Saddam is a threadbare target by now anyway), which weighs down
the film's midsection and has the unappetizing side effect of
equating homosexuality with evil. You don't have to be politically
correct to question why, in 1999, gay men are still used so lazily
as foils for humor, and that laziness, more than anything else,
is what bothered me; Parker and Stone are smarter than that.
They can get along just fine without having to resort to "Let's
laugh at the swishy fag" -- and Big Gay Al's big gay musical
number isn't all that funny anyway.
The movie also threatens to take a turn toward self-important
martyrdom: Terrance and Phillip are scheduled to be executed
-- the way Parker and Stone expect to be crucified for their
offenses to good taste? -- and the blood they shed will unleash
the hounds of chaos. "You brought enough intolerance into
the world for me to take over," Saddam editorializes, as
if a boycott of South Park might mean a domino effect
of shattered freedom everywhere. Parker and Stone sometimes get
too self-congratulatory about their opposition to cultural fascism;
even the best satirists can get caught up in preaching to the
choir. A completely ballsy South Park movie might have
skewered its own merchandising machine and openly questioned
why the movie exists in the first place (answer: because Warner
and Paramount want to make money). Why not put some satirical
screws to the studio that releases Asses of Fire and then
hides behind lofty rhetoric to defend songs like "Uncle
Fucka"? The satire here, while 95% hilarious and dead-on,
can also be awfully one-sided.
Aside from these flaws, which I would only notice and point out
in a movie that is otherwise as incisive as a razor, South
Park consistently hits its targets and our funnybone. With
the help of veteran composer Marc Shaiman (past purveyor of musical
schmaltz for such weepies as Patch
Adams, Shaiman must have spent some time wondering how
he ever got involved in this project), Parker crafts no less
than 14 show-stopping musical numbers, which usually have wicked
fun with some form of kiddie music. Mr. Mackie's instructional
ditty "It's Easy, MmmKay," for instance, sounds to
these ears like a roughhouse goof on Schoolhouse Rock
(I hear a bit of Sesame Street and Electric Company
in it as well), and Satan's big stirring anthem "Up There"
is a pitch-perfect gutting of the typical Oscar-winning Disney
song. Then there's the "international" version of Cartman's
barnstorming "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch," which must be
seen and heard to be believed; all that's missing is a follow-the-bouncing-ball
sing-along.
The thoroughgoing filthiness of South Park can be a cleansing
experience. As a society, we've gotten too damn self-righteous
lately, acting as moral cops for other countries and our own
citizens; Trey Parker and Matt Stone are saying, "Fuck that
-- all of us are fucked up; we've always been fucked
up, we always will be fucked up." Which is a nihilistic
worldview but not necessarily a false one -- Jonathan Swift got
a lot of mileage out of it, and people considered him
crass and offensive, too. God only knows what the Sheila Broflovskis
of America would make of him, if they actually picked up a book. |
