R, 81m, 1999 

With the Voice Talents of Trey Parker (Stan Marsh, Eric Cartman, Gregory, Satan, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Hat, Phillip, Randy Marsh, Clyde Donovan, Tom, Midget in a Bikini, Canadian Ambassador, Bombardiers, Mr. Mackey, Army General, Ned Gerblansky, The Mole, Big Gay Al (singing voice) and Adolf Hitler), Matt Stone (Kyle Broflovski, Kenny McCormick, Saddam Hussein, Terrance, Big Gay Al, Ticket Taker, Stuart McCormick, Jimbo Kearn, Gerald Broflovski and Butters Stotch), Mary Kay Bergman (Liane Cartman, Sheila Broflovski, Sharon Marsh, Carol McCormick, Wendy Testaburger and Clitoris) and Isaac Hayes (Chef). Directed by Trey Parker. Produced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Screenplay by Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Pam Brady. Music by Trey Parker and Marc Shaiman. Based on South Park by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

            Adult animation for television has certainly come a long way since it was popularized in the late 1980s and early 1990s with titles such as Beavis and Butt-Head, The Simpsons and The Critic. These titles attracted quite a bit of controversy and many parents forbade their kids, including yours truly, from watching them. However, a new animated show would come along in 1997, that pushed the envelope of what can be aired on television even further. That show was of course South Park. South Park was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who started the series with the 1992 short Jesus vs. Frosty, and the 1995 short Jesus vs. Santa. These shorts garnered massive attention and soon Parker and Stone were picked up by Comedy Central to produce a show based on the shorts, and the rest is animation history. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut marks the third feature film to be produced by Parker and Stone the first being Cannibal! The Musical in 1993, and the second being Orgazmo in 1997.

            The film opens with Stan Marsh (Trey Parker) gathering his friends Kyle (Matt Stone), Cartman (Trey Parker) and Kenny (Matt Stone) to go see the new movie based on their favorite Canadian show Terrance and Philip. The movie is rated R, so the boys have to pay a homeless guy to pretend to be their guardian. The movie is a musical filled with obscenities so disturbing, they cause many members of the audience to leave in disgust “Well what do you expect, they’re Canadian.”. The boys on the other hand, love the film and leave the theater singing the song “Uncle Fucka”. This incurs the wrath of the parents of South Park and they set out to ensure that Terrance and Philip pay for the crimes of corrupting the minds of their children. Kenny dies after a bet with Cartman goes horribly wrong and he’s sent straight to hell, where he meets Satan (Trey Parker) and his sadistic lover Saddam Hussein (Matt Stone), who in this universe died when he was killed by a pack of wild boars. Satan reveals if Terrance and Philip die on U.S. soil, he’ll finally be able to rise to Earth and wage war. Kenny manages to warn Cartman about the events that are about to transpire, and together with Stan and Kyle, the three boys set out to stop their parents from executing their beloved comedic duo.

            The central themes of this movie are the dangers of censorship as well as bad parenting. South Park is no stranger when it comes to the issue of censorship, as they have dedicated several episodes, most notably in the episodes 200 and 201, to this controversial issue. When this film was in production, the MPAA tried to give this film as NC-17-rating. Trey Parker and Matt Stone were finally able to get the R-rating that they wanted, but at the cost of changing some things in the film. This is really ironic when you stop and think about it given the central theme of this film. When the boys go to see the Terrance and Philip movie, Asses of Fire, their vocabulary become laden with profanities that they picked up from the film. This eventually leads to the parents of South Park, most notably Kyle’s mother, who make it their duty to make the ones responsible for creating the film pay. This plot is an obvious reference to the real-life reaction parents had to South Park. Despite the parents of South Park leaving their kids, for what they claim is to protect the children, they’re actually doing more harm than good. Not only are they forcing their will on other people, they’re also leaving their kids for an extended amount of time, when they could have used that time to spend time with their kids and gotten to know them better and explain why they don’t want them to see certain content. My parents took an active role in the media I consumed, and I believe I turned out for the better because of this. It’s not the job of filmmakers to tone down their work for the sake of children. Some movies might be really good and have a good message, but at the same time it may not be appropriate for children. It’s the job of the parents to monitor what their kids watch, because as the boys put it “Off to the movies we shall go, where we learn everything that we know, because the movies teach us what our parents don’t have time to say.”.

            The animation in this film is largely done in the style of the show, which is in the style of paper cut out animation. The only time it doesn’t utilize this technique is the special effects for the hell sequences, and this is where my only fault in the animation lies, as the film’s special effects were used with computers and they have no aged particularly well. The rest of the film’s animation looks nice, for what’s it’s trying to do. This is even used as a visual gag in several scenes of the film. The area where the animation truly shines is during the musical numbers, where the animators pulled out all the stops to make them as entertaining as possible, giving quite a few of them a nice Broadway feel to them.

            This film is obviously poking fun at the animated musical that had been popularized in the 1990s, during the Disney Renaissance. In fact, quite a few of the songs are satires of some of the songs from the Disney Renaissance or from musicals such as Les Misérables. “Mountain Town” is a visual and lyrical parody of “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast. The song “Up There” is a parody of the trend in Disney Renaissance movies where a character sings about what they want out of life. “Blame Canada” was originally supposed to be a parody of a Disney villain song, instead it satirizes how quick parents are to blame media when their kids do something they don’t approve of. “Eyes of a Child is a parody of adding pop versions of Disney songs, at the end of their movies. “La Resistance” is a parody of “One More Day” from Les Misérables. However, unlike the musical numbers in Disney films as well as in Disney rip-offs, this film features songs that should not be sung by children. Now that isn’t to say the musical numbers in this film are bad, on the contrary, the musical numbers in this film are as entertaining as many of the musical numbers from the Disney Renaissance. The song “Blame Canada” was considered to be so good, it was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000, but it lost to “You’ll be in my Heart” from Tarzan. The songs in this movie are of two kids. The first is to progress the story along and tell what a character is feeling, and the others are centered around the film’s central theme, which is censorship.

            South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was released during the show’s third season. Fearing that their show would be cancelled in the near future, Parker and Stone, decided to put everything they had in this film. Parker and Stone have since stated that they dislike the early seasons of South Park, often times citing the episodes from the first three seasons to be the worst in the show’s history. The same could not be said about South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. This film is a brilliant satire and an amazing movie. While some will find this film to be too offensive and will view it with the same level of contempt as the parents of South Park did towards Asses of Fire, the rest will find a highly enjoyable film that is one of the greatest animated films based on a cartoon.