South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
The Cast
Trey Parker ... Stan Marsh/Eric Cartman/Satan/Mr. Herbert Garrison/Randy Marsh/Mr. Mackey/
Matt Stone ... Kyle Broflovski/Kenny McCormick/Saddam Hussein/Gerald Broflovski/Bill Gates
Mary Kay Bergman ... Liane Cartman/Sheila Broflovski/Sharon Marsh/Wendy Testeberger/Clitoris
Isaac Hayes ... Chef
Jennifer Howell ... Bebe Stevens
George Clooney ... Dr. Gouache/Dr. Doctor
Brent Spiner ... Conan O'Brien
Minnie Driver ... Brooke Shields
Dave Foley ... The Baldwin Brothers
Eric Idle ... Dr. Vosknocker
Nick Rhodes ... Canadian fighter pilot
Stewart Copeland ... American soldier #1
Stanley G. Sawicki ... American soldier #2
Mike Judge ... Kenny's Goodbye
The genre of animated musical films are littered with the saccharine sweet adaptations of fairy tales and the like, usually adapted by Disney or a company comprised of former Disney employees. They tend to feature talking animals voiced by celebrities, with a smattering of musical numbers thrown in, often in an inappropriate and awkward manner. Does it really make a lick of sense for Aladdin to be singing a triumphant song while escaping from members of the Sultan's Army? Come to think of it, most musicals are painfully unbearable for that very reason. Thankfully, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's big screen adaptation of their popular TV show South Park is on the completely opposite end of the Tolerable Musical Spectrum.
If you're not a fan of the TV series or have never seen an episode, an in-depth description of the premise of the movie may just lead you to dismiss ever giving this movie a watch and that would be doing a great disservice to the animated and musical genres of movies. Therefore, I'll be using broad strokes to explain the story, just in case. Four kids from a fictional Colorado town set into motion a series of events that eventually lead to the start of a war between Canada and the United States, not to mention bringing Satan himself from the depths of Hell. All because the kids went and saw an R-rated foreign film based on a popular TV series featuring bathroom humour performed by two Canadian actors.
To say that much of the humour involved in the film is tongue-in-cheek would be an understatement. The South Park movie is a brilliantly staged satire of many topics, not the least of which is the MPAA, something This Film Is Not Yet Rated couldn't accomplish half as brilliantly nearly a decade later. Sadly, the humour was far too sharp for many critics and audiences to correctly interpret back in 1999, which - combined with an R-rating - led the film to only enjoy modest success back then. Well, those factors and the return of Star Wars to multiplexes worldwide.
The Simpsons Movie creative team should have learned from Parker and Stone's approach to the big screen adaptation of their animated TV series. There are many things that they get away with in BLU that they never would on Comedy Central, like a Guinness Book of Records entry for Most Profanity in animated feature. Some of the animation is of a far-higher quality than the TV series, but not in a showy "look what we can do now!" fashion. The musical numbers are definitely the highlight, all of them well orchestrated both musically and theatrically. The medley number in particular is so brilliantly done that I believe it should have been nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar, rather than the barely-pale-by-comparison "Blame Canada". There's a number of scathingly amusing celebrity cameo vocal performances to keep your ears open for as well.
In short, the movie delivers in an amazingly entertaining fashion, one that still has me singing along all these years later. Other than a couple of barely-dated Internet references (I think a search mentioning the word "clitoris" would generate far more than 8 million results nowadays), the movie hasn't seemed to age at all. In some aspects it's probably become even more relevant, what with their MPAA references and the glut of TV series being adapted to the big screen and taking themselves far too seriously in many cases. It's easily one of the best movie musicals of all time, and that isn't a disrespect to the musical genre of movies at all.
5 / 5