South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)

Director:

Trey Parker

Writers:

Trey Parker (television series South Park) &
Matt Stone (television series South Park) ...

Release Date:

30 June 1999 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Comedy | Musical

Tagline:

Warning: This movie will warp your fragile little minds.

Plot:

When the four boys see an R-rated movie featuring Canadians Terrance & Phillip, they are pronounced "corrupted", and their parents pressure the United States to wage war against Canada.

Plot Keywords:

Satan | Hell | Saddam Hussein | Battle | Friends Who Hate Each Other

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 6 wins & 8 nominations

US TV Schedule:

Fri. Jan. 1	1:00 AM	COMEDY
Fri. Jan. 1	3:00 AM	COMEDY

Cast

Trey Parker	...	Stan Marsh / Eric Cartman / Satan / Mr. Herbert Garrison / Phillip Niles Argyle / Randy Marsh / Tom - News Reporter / Midget In A Bikini / Ticket Taker / Canadian Ambassador / Bombardiers / Mr. Mackey / Army General / Ned Gerblanski / Additional Voices (voice)
Matt Stone	...	Kyle Broflovski / Kenny McCormick / Saddam Hussein / Terrance Henry Stoot / Jimbo Kearn / Gerald Broflovski / Bill Gates / Additional Voices (voice)
Mary Kay Bergman	...	Liane Cartman / Sheila Broflovski / Sharon Marsh / Wendy Testeberger / Clitoris / Additional Voices (voice)
Isaac Hayes	...	Chef (voice)
Jesse Howell	...	Ike Broflovski (voice)
Anthony Cross-Thomas	...	Ike Broflovski (voice)
Franchesca Clifford	...	Ike Broflovski (voice) (as Francesca Clifford)
Bruce Howell	...	Man In Theatre (voice)
Deb Adair	...	Woman In Theatre (voice)
Jennifer Howell	...	Bebe Stevens (voice)
George Clooney	...	Dr. Gouache (voice)
Brent Spiner	...	Conan O'Brien (voice)
Minnie Driver	...	Brooke Shields (voice)
Dave Foley	...	The Baldwin Brothers (voice)
Eric Idle	...	Dr. Vosknocker (voice)

Also Known As:

South Park (International: English title) (short title)
South Park Saves the World (USA) (working title)
South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose (USA) (working title)
South Park: BLU (USA) (promotional abbreviation)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (USA) (closing credits title)
The South Park Movie (USA) (working title)
Южный Парк: Большой, длинный, необрезанный (Russia) [ru]
Miasteczko South Park (Poland) [pl]
South Park - Der Film (Germany) [de]
South Park - Der Film: Grösser, länger und ungeschnitten (Germany) (DVD title) [de]
South Park - Plus grand, plus long et sans coupure (Canada: French title) (TV title) [fr]
South Park, le film - Plus long, plus grand et pas coupé (France) [fr]
South Park: Größer, länger und un(b)geschnitten (Germany) [de]
South Park: Größer, länger und ungeschnitten (Germany) (alternative spelling) [de]
South Park: Maior, Melhor e Sem Cortes (Brazil) [pt]
South Park: Større, længere & ucensureret (Denmark) [da]
South Park: Større, lenger & usensurert (Norway) [no]
South Park: il film - più grosso, più lungo & tutto intero (Italy) [it]
South Park: isompi, pitempi & leikkaamaton (Finland) [fi]
South Park: mai mare, mai lung si necenzurat (Romania) [ro]
South park - Sinema filmi (Turkey: Turkish title) (Pay-TV title) [tr]
South park: Más grande, más largo y sin cortes (Spain) [es]

MPAA:

Rated R for pervasive vulgar language and crude sexual humor, and for some violent images.

Runtime:

81 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Sweden:7 | Hungary:18 | France:-12 | Iceland:12 | Iran:(Banned) | USA:TV-MA (tv rating) | USA:R (No. 36729) | Brazil:14 | Singapore:(Banned) | South Africa:13L | Italy:VM14 (sky rating) | Austria:16 | Finland:K-14 (original rating) | Poland:18 | Australia:MA | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:14A | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Chile:18 | Denmark:7 | Finland:K-12 | Germany:16 | Hong Kong:IIB | Iraq:(Banned) | Ireland:18 | Israel:16 | Italy:T | Japan:R-15 | Malaysia:(Banned) | Netherlands:16 (video rating) | New Zealand:R16 | Norway:11 (original rating) | Portugal:M/12 | South Korea:18 | Spain:13 | Taiwan:R-12 | UK:15 | Argentina:16

Company:

Comedy Central Films

Trivia:

Paramount originally asked Trey Parker and Matt Stone if they could make a PG-13 rated film. They said no and would not agree to make a movie until the studio agreed that the final product would be rated R.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the La Resistance towards the climax of the song when the soldiers can be seen singing "Tomorrow night!" on a four-way split screen, the lip-sync doesn't match for the first "Tomorrow night!" and on the third one the mouths don't open at all.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Stan: [singing] There's a bunch of birds in the sky. And some deers just went running by.

Movie Connections:

References Apocalypse Now (1979)

Soundtrack:

Wendy's Song

A truly subversive movie

I was not a fan of South Park before I saw BL&U, nor was I a fan of movie musicals. Well, I'm still not a fan of musicals, but I'm a fan of *this* musical, and am grateful to Parker and Stone for demonstrating that it's still possible to make a great movie on one's own terms.

For this movie, unlike the usual feature-length adaptation of a pop culture phenomenon, not only lives up to its pedigree, it wildly exceeds it. Yes, the movie does recycle many of the show's jokes, but it does so in new yet relevant contexts that keep the material funny if you are familiar with the South Park world. If you aren't familiar with that world (as I wasn't before seeing the movie), the gags are simultaneously accessible yet often subtle.

Subtle? Yes, many of the gags are. Indeed, one of the pleasures of owning a copy of the movie is having the ability to review the movie, in slo-mo if necessary, and discover throwaway sight gags that one has missed in the delirium of watching this anarchic satire the first time through. (And if you have the DVD, you can add subtitles to catch many of the songs' often elusive lyrics.)

Then there's the music. What is it about movie musicals that attracts great satiric minds? Not since Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" has a work of art so subversively exploited the conventions of the movie musical as South Park. From the droll opening strains of Mountain Town, to the Disneyesque "Up There," to the Les Miserables spoof, "La Resistance," South Park simultaneously sends up the genre while paying homage to it, and still finds room to use the songs to score delicious points against its myriad targets.

One last thing: this movie is not cynical. Beneath the scatological humor, the cartoon violence, the scathing portrayals of Wynona Ryder et al, and the backdrop of adult xenophobia, sexual repression and political opportunism, is a sensibility that exalts childhood as an island of honesty and idealism, if also of id-like impulse and frequent selfishness. In this they share space on the shelf of great satires with "Candide," "Gulliver's Travels," "Tom Sawyer" and especially "Huckleberry Finn"--classics that, like BL&U, also exposed the hypocrisies of the adult world "through the eyes of a child."

Elvis Costello once sang, "I want to bite the hand that feeds me/I want to bite that hand so badly/I want to make them wish they'd never met me." That BLU was shut out at the Academy Awards (having only garnered a nomination for the relatively tame "Blame Canada", which lost, appropriately enough, to the execrable Phil Collins) only vindicates the film's take-no-prisoners send-up of nearly everything that annoys in this suffociatingly focus-group-tested, PC-policed, cynically sentimental, violence-ridden, love-starved modern world. See this movie, and see the persistence of hope and possibility sparkling like a diamond amid the pop culture detritus of a quiet little red-necked, white-trash, strait-laced, mesuggeneh, US mountain town.