SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): **
Do you remember back in grade school when one of the kids on the playground would say some mildly off-color phrase, and you and your buddies would erupt into nervous giggles?
Well, writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone do, and, in the animated film SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT, they move their foul-mouthed grade school kids from their television series to the big screen, where they get to lose their few remaining inhibitions.
Imagine visiting a grade school in which the kids compete for the maximum number of obscenities per minute. One in which the insults know no bounds. Mothers are universally referred to with the B-word, and teachers are cussed out to the delight of the entire class. There are undoubtedly people who find this brand of humor extremely funny rather than merely crude. My audience was a mixture of laughers and starers.
The story concerns four boys who see an R-rated animated movie, ASSES OF FIRE. After watching the movie, one kid joins the Klan, but most just switch to a new profanity-laced dialect of the English language. "The animation is all crappy," one of the boys complains in a bit of self-deprecating humor. Any first year art student could draw the characters in SOUTH PARK. The pictures have such little life that they are effectively a series of slightly moving tableaux.
Some bits of humor start off well enough before they go off the deep end. One kid is killed when the doctors implant a baked potato instead of a heart in his chest. When he goes to heaven, it turns out to be populated by naked Playboy models. But the kid doesn't obtain admission. Punching the entry button to the Pearly Gates produces an "Access Denied" error message.
This scene goes down hill once the youngster gets to hell, which is populated by likely and unlikely figures (Hitler as well as Gandhi). Saddam Hussein is there having gay sex with the devil.
Some of the political humor is quite funny, the best being a V-chip that is implanted into one kid's skull. Every bad word produces a painful jolt. And what do you say when you experience sudden pain? You cuss, of course, which only prolongs the agony.
Speaking of prolonging things, the movie would have worked much better as a short film. A quarter of an hour would have been plenty of time with these tart-tongued tiny tots.
SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT runs 1:20. It is rated R for pervasive vulgar language and crude sexual humor and for some violent images. It would be fine for teenagers. Do not make the mistake of taking kids under 13. A woman in my audience did, and you could see her grimacing.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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