South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut 1999
I saw this on Pay-per-view last night and then wound up watching it a second time. It’s easy to do because, primarily, it is short: not even 90 minutes, but also because there so much stuff crammed in it. Yes there is horrible language, pottie humor, homophobia, sacrilege, etc. etc., but they are essential to the movie. I think largely the makers of the movie (and one hopes the audience) know the difference between what’s okay in this movie and what isn’t and the humor comes from the fact that, even though it’s wrong, it’s still funny. Some of the targets of the humor are completely random: the Baldwins, Saddam Hussein, Brooke Shields, and all Canadians. I think it’s the randomness that allows them to get away with the humor: they’re making fun of everyone and for no particular reason.
Certainly this movie isn’t for kids. It’s rated R and it really should be. Some of the messages are a little mixed: profanity saves humanity. Don’t watch it if you’re offended by bad language or if there’s no way you could think that a send-up of cowboy tap-dancing where the taps are farts could possibly be funny. But there are a few other messages: parents should take time to raise their kids instead of blaming society for the kids’ problems, we sometimes walk a little too closely to mind control in an effort to clean up society, censorship is wrong, the army has a habit of sending mostly black units to do high-casualty missions, hate (here against Canadians) is often based on nothing.
I have watched the TV show before and thought it was horrible, but the movie seems to revel in the additional freedom and production values made possible in a full-length (well, almost) feature. This isn’t a great movie, but it has some funny things to say and some surprisingly good musical numbers. If you can stomach the humor you could find, as I did, that it’s one of the funniest movies of 1999.
B+
Written: 08 Jan 2000
Owned on: DVD