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South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
***
Cinema
Releases - August 27, 1999
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Trey Parker. Written by Pam Brady, Trey Parker and
Matt Stone. With the voices of Mary Kay Bergman, Trey Parker, Matt Stone,
Isaac Hayes, George Clooney, Brooke Shields.
I'm not a big fan of the TV show "South Park",
in which crudely animated young characters say and do outrageous things.
It has its moments of wonderfully perceptive satire, but they're surrounded
by crass, annoying whining noises and obnoxious low-blow jokes. It never
makes me bust a gut laughing, and has never deserved its lofty reputation.
It always repeats itself, and always runs out of steam in its last five
minutes.
The not-so-long-awaited film "South Park:
Bigger, Longer & Uncut" is, therefore, a big and welcome surprise.
With it, "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who have previously
had trouble sustaining quality for 25 minutes at a time, find themselves
letting triumphant comedy flow gloriously for an hour and a
half.
The regular gang's all here -- primary school
students Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny. The latter, of course, meets his
maker in every episode of the show, as the others shout "They've killed Kenny!"
Before that happens here, though, all four kids sneak into a profane movie
by their favourite comedians, Canadian duo "Terrence & Phillip". They
walk out imitating the foul language, and as the "small redneck town" of
South Park gets increasingly angry about this, anti-Canadian feeling is stirred
up, leading to war.
Terrence and Phillip are declared war criminals
and sentenced to death, which, we discover in the Kenny-goes-to-hell subplot,
is the seventh sign of the apocalypse. Satan, who is having an affair with
Saddam Hussein, must prepare to take over the world -- a distraction from
his worrying about whether Saddam really loves him.
Obviously, "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut"
is an insane piece of filmmaking, and that sheer madness gets a lot of laughs.
As far as satirical targets go, everything possible is sent up, from the
Internet to army racism, parental platitudes, Winona Ryder and Jar Jar Binks.
The self-satire is even smarter. Using "Terrence & Phillip" as a metaphor,
fun is poked at the unsophisticated nature of "South Park"'s animation, and
at how silly kid fans of the show don't understand the jokes, but just like
to imitate the vulgar surface.
The stupid policies of the American film censor
board, the MPAA, are also under the gun. Policies which come down harder
on foul language than on graphic violence, and luckily for this movie, policies
the MPAA recited when rating it. As a whole, "South Park: Bigger, Longer
& Uncut" has no clear point, but it gets a lot right in its rambling,
and gets a lot of laughs along the way.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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