South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced, Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 3 - Teaser Trailers; 1.33:1, not 16x9 enhanced, Dolby Digital 2.0
Year Released	1999	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	77:57 minutes	Other Extras	Main Menu Audio & Animation Music Video-What Would Brian Boitano Do?
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Trey Parker
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Stan Kyle Cartman Kenny
Case	Snapper
RRP	$34.95	Music	Trey Parker Marc Shaiman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Pan & Scan	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English Arabic Romanian Bulgarian English For The Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is basically a high production value extended episode of South Park with one major difference between the movie and the TV episodes; in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut there is more swearing and it is more profane than in the TV episodes. Consider yourselves warned.

    The plot revolves around a movie called Asses On Fire, starring Terrance and Phillip. Rated R (the approximate equivalent of MA in Australia), it nonetheless becomes de rigouer for Kyle, Stan, Cartman, Kenny and even Ike to see this movie. Their sweet, young, innocent minds are corrupted by the amount and degree of swearing on offer during this movie, which carries over into their language at school. Pretty soon, every child in America has seen this movie and begins swearing like a trooper. Kyle's mother is horrified by this turn of events, and concludes that the only way to react to this corruption of her child is to kidnap Terrance & Phillip and have them executed. This leads to the declaration of war against Canada. The South Park children react to this by attempting to save Terrance & Phillip.

    Generally, this movie is very, very funny, with some brilliant lines and some great satire. My personal favourite would have to be the satire involving Bill Gates. There are some flat moments during the presentation, however. For me, I felt that a lot of the Saddam Hussein/Satan sub-plot simply fell flat. Personally, I feel that South Park and The Simpsons have a lot in common - you can only watch around 30 minutes of either show before the sheer quantity of comedy and satire on offer simply becomes overwhelming and it starts to lose its impact. The other anomaly that I noted with South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was the higher production values of this movie which did not quite sit right with the overall look and feel of the TV series. In particular, the 3D animation did not quite gel with the 2D animation, and the production values of the musical numbers was much higher than in the TV series. I also felt that there were too many musical numbers during this movie, even though they were all brilliant satires.

    My overall opinion? Still highly recommended, though definitely not for young ears.

    ps Check out the Internet Browser - I've never seen that option on my browser... Also, there is a little snippet right at the very end of the credits involving Ike.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. The other side of the disc carries a Pan & Scan version of the movie, which loses a significant amount of side image. The labelling on the packaging is quite misleading, in the trademark Warner Home Video fashion. Side A is labelled as a regular 1.85:1 transfer in 4:3 format. Side B is labelled as a widescreen 1.85:1 transfer in 16:9 format. Sigh. When will Warner Home Video realize that this is utterly meaningless and confusing?

    The transfer was clear and sharp. Being animation, shadow detail does not apply, but the blacks were black and there was no low level noise therein.

    The colours were nicely presented, with an even colour balance about them throughout the transfer. In particular, there was no colour bleeding at all.

    There were no MPEG artefacts seen, however, pans of the image were quite interesting to observe. Compared with the TV series, the pans were jerkier, presumably as a result of the lower frame rate of the movie as compared with the higher field rate of the TV presentation. Otherwise, the overall quality of the image was superior to the TV series. Film artefacts were present to a somewhat excessive degree for a 1999 movie. In particular, there are some very large scratches on the transfer that really should not have been there at 5:28 and 18:44.

Audio

    There is only a single soundtrack on this DVD; English Dolby Digital 5.1.

    Dialogue was generally clear and easy to make out other than during the frequent songs when at times the central dialogue was somewhat drowned out compared to the music and I needed to strain to understand the lyrics. There were no audio sync problems noted. Kenny was a little too easy to make out during this movie, no doubt as the result of some executive decision by one of the nameless suits that bankrolled this movie.

    The score by Trey Parker and Marc Shaiman is excellent, and of much higher quality than that on offer during the TV series. Les Miserables, in particular, comes in for an excellent lambasting.

    The surround channels were unevenly used. The odd special effect panned across the front sound stage at times. Musical numbers were mixed with drowned-out dialogue in the centre channel, music in the front left & right channels and ambience in the rear surrounds. Most of the remainder of the movie was mixed front-and-centre only, except for the scenes in Hell and the war scenes towards the end of the movie, when the surrounds sprung to life and were used very aggressively and very immersively.

    The subwoofer was generally silent during this movie, except to support the music and the aforementioned Hell and War scenes when it sprung to life.

Menu

Menu Animation & Audio

Trailers

Music Video - What Would Brian Boitano Do?

• Music Video - What Would Brian Boitano Do?
• Pan & Scan Version

    The video quality is generally quite good, despite a few more film artefacts than I would have expected from such a recent transfer.

    The audio quality is uneven, but acceptable.

    The extras are limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna (my bio)
5th April 2000