South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)

A lot of people talk about the songs that saved their lives, but in my case it was a movie.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, it took me a long time to realise that any relationship wasn't necessarily automatically better than none. This led to a few very bad life decisions, one of which lasted four years and proved remarkably difficult to escape. I don't think it's necessary or even desirable for me to give the details, but during the last part of that period and for a good year or so afterwards, sleep was something I could only attain in front of the flickering light of the TV, with something comfortingly familiar to distract me.

As to why this tended to be South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut? Still something of a mystery. I was a puritanical little shit right up until my mid-twenties, and when the original animated series came out I'd got my knickers in a twist about how foulmouthed it was, and how incredibly eager it seemed to be to offend as many people as possible. In the (piggy, overly-widely-spaced) eyes of my then significant other, however, these were plus points, and given that we were living in a studio flat, I had no choice but to watch with him. Along the way, I couldn't help but notice that these crudely-animated, sweary little cartoons carried a whole lot of important messages about tolerance, which meant that I could give in and finally admit to what I'd secretly felt all along - yeah, this was pretty funny stuff.

In its broadest terms, SP:BLU is a story about censorship and freedom of expression. In slightly narrower terms, it's a musical, a war movie and a pastiche of both of these. Most specifically of all, it's a blast. It takes the four heroes of the series, kids Stan, Cartman, Kyle and Kenny, and has them trying to save the lives of their Canadian heroes Terrance and Phillip after the fart-based humour in their movie leads to imitative behaviour and, eventually, brutal conflict between Canada and the USA. Subplots, meanwhile, include Stan's quest to find the mystic Clitoris, and, down in Hell, Satan's attempts to liberate himself from an abusive relationship with Saddam Hussain.

If it all sounds rather hectic, you wouldn't be wrong...

The good

I'm guessing that if I'm going to sell this one to you, I've probably already done it by this point - heck, you've probably seen it already. It's a shame, really, because I suspect the people who stand to gain the most from viewing it are probably those who'd avoid it at all costs. I repeat, not for the first time, that people are assholes.

Anyway, why do I love it so much? Two reasons. 

Firstly, the central message, which is that with so much other fucked-up shit going on in the world, protecting kids from a few bad words maybe shouldn't be a major priority. 

Secondly, though, and perhaps more crucially, SP:BLU has to be the single most beautiful pastiche of movie musicals I've ever encountered. From the opening notes, it's all immaculately judged, each song a perfectly-formed and implausibly hummable little parody of something you've heard before. On balance, Disney probably gets nudged the hardest, with a couple of overt melodic nods to Beauty and the Beast plus Up There, Satan's very own take on Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid, but given that they still have a near-stranglehold on the genre, this probably isn't unfair. My favourite number, however, La Resistance, is straight from the likes of Evita and Les Miserables, employing layered reprises and split-screen techniques to create something recognisable, funny, but actually also fairly powerful.

The bad

Don't do what my parents did and buy a copy of this for your eleven-year-old grandson, m'kay? Most especially, don't do it when your daughter, who's a childrens' librarian and film buff, suggests it's a bad idea. You'll only land up watching it, being shocked, complaining but then refusing to acknowledge that she categorically told you that this was what would happen.

The verdict

...Actually, no, scratch the above paragraph. Certainly, buy this one for the kids in your life, but watch it with them and don't shy away from any awkward questions that result.  SP:BLU is right up there with Life of Brian in terms of being one of the most morally upright films I've seen, and if you haven't caught it yet, there's no time like the present.