Susan Granger’s review of “SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT” (Paramount/Warner release)
“Off to the movies we shall go…Where we learn everything that we know…’Cause the movies teach us what our parents don’t have time to say.” That’s the “Mountain Song,” which begins this rude, raunchy, animated musical, starring Comedy Central’s most corrupted TV third-graders. The cheeky tykes – Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny – bribe a homeless man to take them to an R-rated movie, “Asses of Fire,” starring a foul-mouthed, flatulent Canadian duo. Armed with a scatological vocabulary, which they don’t truly comprehend, the boys start spewing such profanity that their once-peaceful South Park community launches a vindictive anti-smut campaign which grows into a national movement, resulting in the United States declaring war on Canada. In one of the most cynical vignettes, one of the boys has a behavior-modification V-chip implanted, delivering a severe electrical shock each time he utters a bad word. How is the movie different from the TV series? It’s a musical with nasty, dirty parodies of “The Sound of Music” and “Les Miserables” with some inspirational ballads tossed in. Writer/director Trey Parker, along with Matt Stone, Pam Brady, and composer Marc Shaiman have devised a cleverly scathing, if crude, social parable, mocking our fear of and distaste for toilet humor, Satan, and Saddam Hussein, plus making some biting points about censorship, tolerance, and freedom of speech. Celebrity voices include George Clooney, Minnie Driver, Brent Spiner, and Eric Idle. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “South Park” is an obscene, offensive, smutty 7. Warning to parents: this funny, fast-paced, irreverent film pushes the envelope of its R-rating and, while childish, is definitely for adults, not children.
