Watched: 07/23/2023
Format: Max, I think
Viewing: Unknown
Director: Trey Parker
If you'd told me in 1998 or so that South Park, the goofy animated construction-paper show on a young Comedy Central would now be a permanent part of the cultural landscape in 2023, you could have knocked me over with a feather.
Like any 20-something with cable, I was a watcher of the show and in 1999, shocked to see they were going to the big screen.
July 4, 1999, Austin received some rain and fireworks were unlikely. The folks who'd assembled at our apartment decided to load up and go see the movie to extend our day. Mostly what I remember was that the theater was only partially full, and almost immediately, people were trickling out.
The notion of "adult animation" is now taken for granted, but "animation" in 1999 was still all-ages in the minds of many, and "for children" in the minds of just as many more. So I'm sure those moms who took their little Cartmans to see the film had very long talks with their kids on the way home and now had to do the work of parenting and understanding what their kids were watching that they'd hoped basic cable packages would take care of.
And, oh my, did the South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, take advantage of what it means to have a hard-R rating. No one is more foul-mouthed than kids trying on profanity, and to this day, that movie contains some of the most creative uses and best word pictures celebrating a dirty mouth of anything I can think of. It's kind of glorious.
However, the genuine shock of the film is that it was.... great. It moves at a rocket pace, it's wildly entertaining, it understands the language and tropes of film and uses them like a Swiss Army knife, it has an evergreen premise and point (one that it's hard to believe the same audience for this movie in 1999 has forgotten in this era as imaginary issues and invisible monsters are the driving platform of a major political party), and the music is as good or better than anything in a musical of the last 40 years. All while spoofing same.
Like anything dabbling in offensive material, some items were way too much for audiences then, most still plays, and some bits wouldn't make it now without causing distracting controversy. Man, we loved our homophobic slurs in the late 20th century.
But it seems the little 22 minute homilies of the South Park episodes had well trained Trey Parker in particular (he wrote the music and seems to have been the major force behind the film) to make a thinly veiled point, outline the absurdity of human behavior, take the piss out of it, and move on to the next topic.
If you can't remember, the plot of the film:
Canadian TV stars Terrance and Phillip have their own movie coming out. As huge Terrance and Phillip fans, the lead kids of SP go to the movie only to find out it's a Rated-R picture, and so after sneaking in, they find out what a Rated-R film might contain in the way of horrendously offensive language.
In addition to bringing the language into school, all of the kids see the movie, and in a moment of post-movie debate about whether one could light a fart on fire IRL, Kenny goes en fuego and, being Kenny, dies. While Kenny is sent to hell to go negotiate the romantic life of Satan and a manipulative SOB Saddam Hussein, Kyle's mom takes it upon herself to start a literal war with Canada over the potty-mouthed Terrance and Phillip, who are being held for an execution within the US.
I'm skimming, to be sure.
But the point is - it's kind of amazing to see, of all the movies from 1999, this one might feel so evergreen and on point. Parker and Stone weren't stupid. Giving them the platform of a film and R rating was going to cause some kerfuffles. And they also weren't wrong that the parents who paid no attention to what their kids were up to would be mad that those same kids both saw and processed media without the parents paying any damn attention, and managed to deflect blame onto others while also caring way, way too much about their kids defying their expectations and inverting their concern back onto people who had done nothing wrong.
Like I said, people trickled out of the movie, and among those were parents who had somehow selected the South Park movie, driven to see it, paid to see it and sat down for it with their kid and had no idea what they were in for.
Of course the movie is chock-a-block of now dated references and Parker and Stone's peculiar thing of thinking that just showing a celebrity is funny in itself. Ex: The Winona Ryder bit is confusing (and clearly a failed reference to a scene from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). Like, maybe there are insidery LA things about celebrities I don't know, but I don't know them. So.
It's also a reminder that Mary Kay Bergman passed before the work she did was nominated for an Oscar, as "Blame Canada" was nominated, and, in fact, performed at the 2000 Academy Awards ceremony. Y'all pour one out for Mary Kay Bergman.
Anyway, it was a delight to watch again. And, of course, wonder if there isn't room for a Broadway show of the movie.
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