“Now let’s see—what would Brian Boitano do?”
Following up from last time, let’s look back to the Class of ’99 with something animated—something that twenty-five years ago confused a lot of people still getting to grips with the idea of a bright cartoon that could also, shall we say, take a very irreverent attitude to the niceties of a supposed kiddy medium. In other words, it was a bit rude. So with that in mind, let’s see how well South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut holds up!
The show created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone isn’t quite as shocking or new as it was back in the late nineties, but it’s still going, and unlike certain other animated shows it’s at least evolved itself somewhat over the years. From rather blunt parodies of everything from Pokemon to protein shakes, the series definitely honed its satirical abilities as time went on. You might not agree with everything it puts out, but at the same time there’s something to be said in its even-handedness with targets, and if nothing else the creators have had the courage to evolve certain positions as time goes on, which is more that what can be said for others!
But back in ’99 Trey and Matt were working on the assumption that this would be the last hurrah for a project barely two years old then—the production was very trying for them, as they burnt bridges across Hollywood just to get some sort of creative freedom. And by sheer coincidence, the question of how far creative expression and censorship should go is very much the theme here.
The plot is fairly straightforward—we focus on our cast of elementary school kids in a backwater Colorado town who one day happen to sneak into a movie made by their favorite foul-mouthed Canadians that apparently is basically nothing but swearing and fart jokes (essentially what South Park itself was accused of!). Teachers and parents catch wind of the resultant potty mouths, and one outrage leads to another, escalating as is typical of South Park’s style into the absurd as the United States and Canada end up declaring war on each other, with our young protagonists get caught in the center. Also hoping to exploit events is none other than Satan. With his abusive lover, Saddam Hussein. Again, South Park.
It’s a little hard to appreciate now, but the flick was essentially aping the Disney Renaissance style still very much in vogue back then—hence the shift into a musical format, starting off with a introductory ditty right out of Beauty and the Beast. We then move onto fully orchestrated chorus-back songs like, well, ‘Uncle Fucka’. And yet, the songs still are damn catchy, and work in their own right twenty five years later, thanks to the creators having actual education in music—the best way to parody something, after all, is to actually know how its done in the first place. It also helps that they had guest musicians involved like Primus and even James Hetfield from Metallica on one of the briefer but yet more memorable tunes!
The other factor that helps this one still work a quarter-century on is perhaps accidental, but still relevant. The general message is where we draw the line at trying to suppress something, and at what—questions that still rage even harder now across battlegrounds of social media and ever more tiresome cultural kerfuffles. Even moreso than in the nineties, people still wonder how healthy it really is to simply stick kids in front of a screen without checking what they’re consuming—and now with the consequences potentially being far broader than just bad language, the theme here of people dodging responsibility in favor of just outrage after the fact feels ever more pointed.
There’s also all the little things too. Like crappy software still being annoying even coming from a billion-dollar company. Boy, it sure is great that we’ve sorted that since the nineties.
Overall? Yeah, this one still gets a chuckle out of me for sure—there’s been other direct-to-streaming movies from South Park since and while they had their moments, they didn’t match the memorability of this one. Hell, people even do sing-a-longs of it still—and boy are those something. Luckily, there still remains no need to blame Canada here (before someone thinks of blaming us!)
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