Flak Magazine: Review of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, 7-2-99

South Park's humor and merit are not in its envelope-pushing but in its over-the-top, ridiculous variations on old sitcom ideas. In making the feature film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, however, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone get that balance wrong.

The plot’s straightforward, though not simple: An R-rated Canadian film, Asses of Fire, opens in South Park and the crew is dying to see it. Having tricked the theater into allowing their underage admission, they take great pleasure in watching the film’s stars, Terrence and Philip, farting and swearing with aplomb. Mechanistically, the South Park brats can’t help but begin to speak saltily at every turn, prompting the PTA to attack the film in an ever-escalating conflagration that results in a full-scale war with Canada and the death sentence for Terrence and Philip. When the boys learn the execution of the actors will permit Satan and his domineering lover, Saddam Hussein, dominion over the earth, they try to prevent the execution.

While the movie guarantees laughs throughout, about 90 percent of them come from the film’s musical numbers — Bigger, Longer & Uncut is a full-fledged musical in the vein of Les Misérables — and many of these songs are truly unmotivated. Should you need to define “unmotivated” to someone and lack a dictionary but possess a copy of this film, refer to Big Gay Al’s number or the ditty Saddam sings to win back the heart of Satan. Sometimes these non sequitirs work as well as they did for Monty Python — “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” is a gem — but mostly they just seem desperate. They’re often funny, but they function more like extended commercial breaks than scenes from the film.

If you discount the songs, the movie’s only funny insofar as its premise is funny (that is, mildly), and its profanity is exhausting. Where the sailorspeak in Glengarry Glen Ross or even Reservoir Dogs connoted something about the frustrations and repressions of its characters, Bigger, Longer & Uncut hammers you with obscenities so wild and so out-of-place in these children’s mouths that they intoxicate for a short time but spoil quickly (although they return triumphantly in the climactic fight with Saddam).

Their inclusion is political; South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone had such a row with the MPAA over their film Orgazmo that they chose to make Bigger, Longer & Uncut the bird with which to flip them off. That wry joke is woven throughout — the war with Canada is a bloodbath and the ill-fated Kenny dies gruesomely (twice) and is carted off to a heaven with nude, big-bosomed angels for greeters, but the filmmakers know none of that will raise any censorial eyebrows. The hot button is undoubtedly the talk, which is what incites the South Park parents to such arms against Asses of Fire. To Parker and Stone, this is a double standard: They reject the idea that foul language is more objectionable than the gory violence that almost unequivocally receives an R rating.

Many would agree with them, but don’t go to this movie expecting anything like a reasoned critique of or a convincing declamation of censorship. Much like Asses of Fire, Bigger, Longer & Uncut is worth defending only for its own sake, if at all. A better-made movie might prompt an escalation in the dialogue about the appropriateness of movie ratings, but to speak up on behalf of this film is to argue for freedom of expression in the most abstract sense. Creating that abstraction is just what Parker and Stone appear to have wanted; they’ve succeeded.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)