Most critics expected, when the anarchic, devotedly vulgar Comedy Central cartoon hit the big screen, that it would be pretty funny and remarkably foul-mouthed. They were right on both counts, but what few people expected is that it would also be unexpectedly profound (or, well, as profound as a movie featuring Satan and Saddam Hussein as feuding gay lovers could be), with a message about censorship that was more practical than self-righteous, and that its parodic sensibilities would be so remarkable spot-on. In fact, given the direction that the series took -- becoming increasingly more dogmatic and quite a bit more obvious in its political point-making -- it's easy to see the 1999 film as the pinnacle of the South Park experience, where everyone involved really hit their stride.
This is especially true with the movie's exceptionally enjoyable soundtrack. Rather than going for a more contemporary feel, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in conjunction with Hollywood music vet Marc Shaiman -- decided to go whole hog with a big-screen musical parody, tossing everything from Disneyesque ballads of longing to amped-up schoolyard jingles that play like something out of a Busby Berkeley musical to battle hymns juiced with triumphal orchestral swells to big-screen Oscar bait weepers made of 100% processed cheese. The remarkable thing about them was how perfectly the parodies worked: so well, in fact, that the obnoxious bigot's anthem "Blame Canada" actually got itself nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song, leaving the show's producers with the difficult question of how to stage a musical number featuring language that wasn't allowed to be heard on television. (They came up with the elegant solution of having Robin Williams sing the live version of "Blame Canada" during the Oscar ceremony, and he's capable of draining the funny out of anything, so nobody complained.) The songs on the soundtrack are pitch-perfect parodies; if you strip away the relentlessly filthy language and the subversive bits of the lyrics, there's almost nothing whatever to set them apart from the cheeseball Elton John melodies in a first-tier animated Disney "modern" classic. It's the pouring on of tons of formal sincerity -- and then the total upending with gobs and gobs of adolescent toilet irony -- that makes the whole soundtrack work so remarkably well.
(One caveat: the praise we heap on the South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut soundtrack applies only to the original songs featured in the main story of the movie. The "bonus tracks" on the album, mostly rap and metal reworkings of songs in the film, are largely reprehensible, bottom-drawer, 100% filler. There's some fun to be had with a Violent Femmes cover of "I Can Change", and it's amusing for exactly one listen to hear Rush's Geddy Lee sing "O Canada", but other than that, everything after track 12 can be safely deleted from your hard drive.)
BEST TRACKS: The wildly jolly, almost Vaudevillian show tune that is "Uncle Fucka" -- a horribly profane ditty sung by the Canadian cartoon duo Terrance & Phillip that goes several light-years beyond gratuitous -- gets things rolling early on. Eric Cartman's rendition of a song previously rendered on the small screen as an extemporaraneous schoolyard taunt, "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch", is served up with all the gusto of a Broadway show-stopper, complete with novelty international choruses. "Eyes of a Child" is such a thick, fragrant slice of bogus emotional cheesiness, it's easy to see Michael McDonald crooning it on a lite-rock FM station in your dentist's office, which makes it all the more amazing that they actually got Michael McDonald to sing it here; and if nothing else, "I Can Change" is the only time in cinematic history in which we see former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein crooning a jaunty ditty in order to seduce the Prince of Darkness into going to bed with him. So far, at least.
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