South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

Viewed for the second time February 26, 2000 on video

For full information on this film, click here.

Seeing it a second time, I could appreciate the deftness of the musical numbers, which, taken as a whole, are cleverer than most of what you would find on Broadway these days. However, watching it in my living room, I was far more nervous about the profanity this time, with my mother somewhere within earshot (I turned the volume down real low).  And once again, somewhere around the 45 minute mark the satire lost any semblance of a target and was just shooting buckshot over anything that moved, including itself.  There is a point to make fun of people who take things too seriously, but in the process Stone and Parker reveal the depths of their own pointlessness. I wonder if this is just a new postmodern breed of satire -- offering contempt for contempt's sake, providing merely the pretense of pertinent social ridicule if only for the sake of exploiting its comical effects.  

Seen at the Alexandria, July 28, 1999

I never watched "South Park" before seeing the movie (I have a good excuse, being out of the country for the last two years), and it wasn’t until after I rented a couple of episodes that I realized what the fuss was about.  It is one funny show, with surprising moments of sophistication lodged within a bog of manure humor.  But after an hour I experienced a feeling of overload, and slight disgust.  This show, for me at least, can only be taken in half hour doses, before it loses momentum and the nastier side of its sentiments descend on the viewer.  Somehow this never happened with "The Simpsons", that other hyperactive adult cartoon.  The bare crudity of South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut hits hard and fast, which gives a real rush at first, but 90 minutes is just too long for this kind of humor.

One reason for this dissipating enjoyment is my growing awareness of the satire’s superficiality as I’m viewing.  Obscenity as freedom of speech is the kind of flag-waving to which no-talents like 2 Live Crew must resort.  Trey Parker and Matt Stone shoot at many other targets with a broadness that works for laughs on the level of knee-jerk reactions and offers nothing for subsequent contemplation.  A particular example of this humor was their quizzical preoccupation with gay themes.  Often funny (I laughed at the abusive relationship between Saddam and Satan) but utterly pointless, it revealed, if anything, a bizarre sexual hang-up lurking in the filmmakers.  At least the moments of sophistication managed to emerge, particularly in the crude but lyrically deft musical numbers that were thrown out so quickly as to be instantly forgettable.  Quite the opposite of the movie that started Hollywood’s craze for baseness, There’s Something About Mary, even the best moments of South Park could hardly be remembered by the time I stepped into the lobby.

Home