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Review by Susan Granger
3 stars out of 4
"Off to the movies we shall go...Where we learn everything
that we know...'Cause the movies teach us what our parents don't have
time to say." That's the "Mountain Song," which begins this rude,
raunchy, animated musical, starring Comedy Central's most corrupted TV
third-graders. The cheeky tykes - Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny -
bribe a homeless man to take them to an R-rated movie, "Asses of
Fire," starring a foul-mouthed, flatulent Canadian duo. Armed with a
scatological vocabulary, which they don't truly comprehend, the boys
start spewing such profanity that their once-peaceful South Park
community launches a vindictive anti-smut campaign which grows into a
national movement, resulting in the United States declaring war on
Canada. In one of the most cynical vignettes, one of the boys has a
behavior-modification V-chip implanted, delivering a severe electrical
shock each time he utters a bad word. How is the movie different from
the TV series? It's a musical with nasty, dirty parodies of "The Sound
of Music" and "Les Miserables" with some inspirational ballads tossed
in. Writer/director Trey Parker, along with Matt Stone, Pam Brady, and
composer Marc Shaiman have devised a cleverly scathing, if crude,
social parable, mocking our fear of and distaste for toilet humor,
Satan, and Saddam Hussein, plus making some biting points about
censorship, tolerance, and freedom of speech. Celebrity voices include
George Clooney, Minnie Driver, Brent Spiner, and Eric Idle. On the
Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "South Park" is an obscene, offensive,
smutty 7. Warning to parents: this funny, fast-paced, irreverent film
pushes the envelope of its R-rating and, while childish, is definitely
for adults, not children.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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