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But if you want to see a good rude movie, try South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. Just, pleeeeze, leave the children at home, unless you want them talking like the late Sam Kinison and don’t mind answering questions about various bodily features, functions, and proclivities that don’t get covered in the average elementary school health text, because it’s chock full o’ lots and lots of very naughty bits. (At the crowded show I attended, a woman with three kids — an infant, a toddler, and a pre-schooler — trundled the whole lot, stroller and all, into the row right behind me. She proceeded to read aloud for their benefit all the signs and other written gags, although she did take them out during a sequence involving a character who questioned the existence of God, saying she didn’t think that was appropriate. I followed her at a safe distance out to the parking lot and got her license plate number, which I emailed to Jerry Falwell’s people.)
There’s no need to rehash the guilty pleasures of the hit Comedy Central series here. What makes B,L & U interesting as a movie is the art-imitating-life plot, which ironically is about what happens when Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny sneak into a particularly R-rated Canadian movie (on a Sunday morning, yet), Terence and Phillip’s ìAsses of Fire,î and within minutes they, and soon every other child in town, have come down with a virulent case of pornolalia (that’s an original word; feel free to use it if you like). A concerned parents’ campaign rapidly escalates into all-out war with Canada and impending apocalyptic reign by Satan and his dead gay lover Saddam Hussein.
This can’t be stressed too much: the language here is the most effusive, protracted profanity you are likely to hear this side of family court. But it’s rather creative profanity, and besides, David Mamet wins Tony Awards for using those words. There’s also plenty of creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s dead-on cultural humor (anybody who’s ever had a beef with Windows should at least walk in about 50 minutes after the film has started and stick around to see what happens to Bill Gates). The only thing that may put fans off a little is the number of songs, such as “Redneck, Meshuggenneh, Quiet Mountain Town,” “Hell Isn’t Good,” and “What Would Brian Boitano Do” — which, granted, are some of the goofiest lyrics since the 1979 cult fave The First Nudie Musical — that occasionally slow the pace down too much.
Parker and Stone stated from the outset of this project that they were out to make a point, following the NC-17 stamp and attendant box-office failure of their first movie Orgazmo, about how the politics of movie ratings allow filmmakers to get away with extreme violence, but not sex and language. Well, they succeed, and even manage to lampoon their own excess, by widely avoiding anything even remotely politically correct; they just offend everybody. Especially Barbara Streisand. B-
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