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South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut on DVD
• "Profane Music" • Dolby Digital 5.1 More DVD info... |
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South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut on DVD
• "Profane Music" • Dolby Digital 5.1 More DVD info... |
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Original Review, by Christian Clemmensen
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: (Parker/Shaiman) Oh my god! Guess what? This album is racist, childish, and offensive. Then again, so is South Park. In the end, the music which appears in the film is actually more creative than I anticipated, with lyrics and musical parodies that couldn't be missed by some. In these regards, South Park fanatics will likely covet this redneck, quiet, little, white-trash album. Those who find the show to be complete crap, though, will find the album to be unparalleled bullshit. I am a casual observer of the South Park phenomenon; occasionally, there is a show or two a season that captures my interest (anyone remember the alien anal probes and talking piece of fecal matter?). But on the whole, I lost interest a year or so ago. I have great respect for Marc Shaiman, who usually engages with fluffy, whole-hearted dramas such as Patch Adams and the American President. And interestingly, it is his contribution to this album alone that keeps it afloat. Whether intentional or not, Shaiman's songs mimic those by Alan Menken for the Disney films of the early 1990s. "Mountain Town" is a direct parody of "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast and "I'm Super" comes from "Arabian Nights" in Aladdin. Other elements (little snippets here and there) come from The Little Mermaid and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This may or may not have been intentional, but the result is nonetheless amusing: like listening to Alan Menken/Disney songs with relentless and fucking offensive lyrics. A few of the lyrics are above and beyond the usual South Park material. From "Saddam Hussein was killed by a pack of wild boars" and "Canada's not a real country anyway," there are some laughs. Then again, the mass of vocal material is blasted at a tasteless level below even my sick humorous likings. The highlights of the album are "Mountain Town," "Blame Canada," and the "La Resistance" medley that takes aim at the climactic Les Miserables format. The songs without Shaiman's assistance, tackled by the show's creator Trey Parker himself, are more of a pop song variety. Like the show itself, it can be funny while listening to it, but it leaves a bitter aftertaste. Countering the positive influence of Shaiman's musical talent are a number of things working against this album. First, the "interpretational songs" at the end --none of which appears in the film-- are all really poor, with performances by shitty "B" artists. Second, the lyrics are just too damn low. I typically love trashy humor, but the excess of juvenile material (encompassed mainly by the second and fifth songs) gets tiring very quickly. Third, the voices are fucking irritating! It's one thing to hear Stan and Cartman performing their lines in the show, but nobody should be submitted to the torture of hearing them attempt to sing. And then there's an entirely separate issue here: the album's targeting of groups and individuals is potentially offensive. It's by no coincidence that this album vilifies certain racial groups; Satan, with his gospel ensemble, is clearly black. Arabs are stereotyped as a bunch of brutes. Canadian listeners will hear their national anthem crucified. Religious advocates will hear Jesus at the butt of every other joke. Not to mention what Brian Boitano and Celine Dion think of it... So depending on how sensitive you are, this album could seriously irritate you. It's the type of music that could stunt the growth of any good Christian child, too. Overall, the film has just too much trashy music to enjoy on CD. For a South Park flick, it's a splendid culmination of efforts, but for non-fans or even casual fans, it's a shitty listening experience. There are some funny moments, and from a film music background, it's fun to see where certain musical motifs were plucked by Shaiman from children's films, but it's difficult to overlook the eight really wretched songs at the end. The voices are irritating and they're often performed too harshly to understand. ..."Oh my God! They killed that Disney song! Those bastards!"
For non-South Park fans: FRISBEE Overall: ** Review #2, by Todd China
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut: (Parker/Shaiman) If you can get past the massive amounts of profanity, you will hopefully be able to appreciate what a great soundtrack this is. I had only seen a couple of episodes of the show when I first saw the film, but I grew to love the songs. South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut is one of the most entertaining animated musicals of the 90s, surpassed only by Beauty and the Beast in terms of the sheer creative genius of the songs. A comparison with Beauty and the Beast may sound downright blasphemous, but the greatness of South Park lies in the fact that it is the very anti-thesis of everything the Disney musicals (and all their subsequent imitators) stand for. Nothing is too sacred, no joke too low, no statement too politically incorrect for Trey Parker and his cohorts. This isn't high art --you don't listen to South Park to hear beautiful voices, you listen to it for its biting, sarcastic, gleefully anti-social message. In short, South Park is a brilliant satire that succeeds by stretching the concept of "offensive" to rarely ventured territories of absurdity. There is so much profanity in the lyrics that the listener is quickly and completely desensitized to it by the time "Uncle Fucka" hits its final note. South Park is so offensive by its very nature that Trey Parker clearly felt that in order to create something *truly* offensive by South Park standards, he had to go to absurd lengths with Terrence and Phillip and their movie, "Asses of Fire." Therefore, what results is a song, "Uncle Fucka," that is 100 times more offensive than what we, the audience, are accustomed to. There isn't much to the lyrics, but they do serve their purpose, and Parker's music has a manic energy that I find hard to deny. The orchestral accompaniment to "Uncle Fucka" and "I Can Change" is pretty energetic and creative --I find it hard to believe that these songs were written entirely without the assistance of others, in terms of the orchestrations. "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch," which comes directly from the show, is probably the least engaging of the songs, but even this number has a redeeming moment. When Eric says, "Talk to kids around the world, it might sound a little bit something like this," we see kids in France, the Pacific islands, and Africa spouting ridiculous gibberish, with hilarious results. "It's Easy, Mmmkay" and "Blame Canada" are two of the most subversive and entertaining songs on the soundtrack. I find the idea of a bunch of kids going through rehabilitation to learn to replace "ass" with "buns" and "shit" with "poo" very funny. There is some great irony in hearing the kids sing, "We shouldn't say fuck, no we shouldn't say fuck, fuck, no!" "Blame Canada" is also a brilliant satire that pokes fun at our society's need for scapegoats and easy answers. The song could apply to the current events of today, what with the scramble among school officials, parents, and politicians to regulate guns and violent video games in the aftermath of school shootings --the need to find something to blame for our social problems. "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" and "La Resistance" are two other standout songs on the album. In these songs, as in the others, there are some viciously funny lyrics and amusing rhymes, such as in "What Would Brian Boitano Do?", when Eric sings, "I want this V-chip out of me / It has stunted my vocabulary." The heroic feats of Brian Boitano are all pretty hilarious, especially the one about "When Brian Boitano was in the Alps / Fighting grizzly bears / He used his magical fire breath and saved the maidens there." I also love how in "La Resistance," Gregory goes over the top in describing all the horrible things that might happen to our heroes... "You get stabbed in the head with a dagger or a sword / You might be burned to death, or skinned alive or worse..." The "interpretations" on this disc are generally pretty horrible. Only track 17 is marginally listenable, given that it was used over the end credits. The absence of Marc Shaiman's underscore is a shame indeed, given the crap that filled up the disc instead. Although this soundtrack is a little on the short side (I'm counting only the songs from the film here), it is a true laugh riot. ****
(track times not included on packaging)
The insert contains extensive credits for each track as well as an excess of pictures from the film. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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