South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut / YMMV

And You Thought It Would Fail: With massive Executive Meddling from Paramount and the MPAA and interest in the show waning after only the second season, Trey Parker and Matt Stone were convinced that the film would be a major flop and made it as a last hurrah for the series and their career. Instead, it was a commercial success and critically acclaimed as a smart and funny satire and greatly raised attention to the show, which has now taken The Simpsons' place as the gold standard of modern American satire.
Award Snub:
- "Blame Canada" was widely recognized as the best of the 2000 Academy Award nominees for Best Song. Unfortunately, it lost to Phil Collins' "You'll Be In My Heart". Trey Parker and Matt Stone admitted that they weren't expecting to win, but they were not happy with losing to Phil Collins in particular.
- There's also debate on whether "Blame Canada" should have been the nominated song at all, with many fans believing that "Up There", "What Would Brian Boitano Do?", or "La Resistance" were the superior songs and deserved the nomination more. It's been theorized that it was the song that got nominated because it was the only one that wouldn't have to be heavily censored when performed during the Academy Awards ceremony.
- It also inexplicably missed out on Best Adapted Screenplay.
Awesome Music: Now has its own page.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Near the end of the "Mountain Town" reprise, an orca whale jumps up a la Free Willy.
Common Knowledge: Cartman's song about Sheila is officially called "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch", not "Kyle's Mom Is A Big Fat Bitch".
Crosses the Line Twice: Does it so many times it does a triple axle and three salchows while wearing a blindfold over it.
- Kenny being set on fire after a dare to light his fart by Cartman, to prove what Terrence and Phillip did in the movie could happen in reality, and then being put out by a salt truck. After this, his heart is replaced by a baked potato, subsequently causing his death. The way it's portrayed is needlessly cruel, but clearly meant to be laugh-provoking.
- The German Scheisse video involving Cartman's mom was really unnecessary and did not affect the plot in addition to being extremely disgusting. It coming up out of nowhere makes it rather humorous.
Cry for the Devil: A literal, Miltonian example — Satan is one of the most sympathetic characters in the entire film due to his abusive relationship, a far cry from his earlier antagonistic appearance in "Damien" and a step towards his modern Satan Is Good depiction. While he was about to claim Earth as his dominion, his musical number established that he wanted to enjoy the wonders of Earth and that he only follows the conventional definition of "evil" to maintain balance in the universe. He's not a villain because he enjoys it, he's a villain because there has to be a villain.
Ensemble Dark Horse: This movie is Ze Mole's only appearance in the entire series (aside from an extremely brief one-second cameo in "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub", where he's seen on Late Night with Conan O'Brien). He appears for roughly 15 minutes in the movie. He is by far one of the most popular subjects in South Park fan-fiction and fan-art.
- Ditto for Gregory, who also made his sole appearance in the movie and existed purely to be The Rival to Stan, but fans loved him so much that he frequently appears as a main character in most fan-fictions he appears in, especially in ones where the boys aren't the central focus of the story. This might be due to his looks and voice.
Growing the Beard: The movie, as well as the episodes of the show that premiered after it, are generally considered to be a huge improvement over the pre-movie episodes as this is the point when the creators began to compliment the vulgar humor with sharp social satire.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- In light of the cyber-attacks on Sony Pictures allegedly by North Korea over the film The Interview, the plot about going to war over a movie doesn't seem too farfetched anymore.
- It wasn't really anticipated, but Kenny's Heroic Sacrifice becomes a lot less poignant after watching the "Coon and Friends" trilogy, where it's explained that he comes back to life every time he dies, so it wasn't a very big sacrifice for him to go back to Hell. On the flip side, it also turns him going to Heaven at the very end from a Heartwarming Moment to a Tear Jerker. So near, yet so far...
- During the Oscars, Robin Williams sang "Blame Canada" as Mary Kay Bergman, the voice actress of nearly all the characters who sing that song, had committed suicide earlier due to serious depression. In 2014, Williams would also take his life for the exact same reason.
- The 21st season episode "Super Hard PCness" repeats the events of this film, except with Kyle in the place of Shelia starting a war against Canada over Terrence and Phillip and un-PC culture, and Canada getting nuked at the end.
- The whole premise of the movie when you consider it came out two months after Columbine. In the aftermath, Moral Guardians were blaming everything from violent video games to death metal music, to even South Park itself, much like how Canada was being blamed for Asses of Fire in this movie.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Gregory's speech about how America polices the world. Not only that, but Scott the Dick would later give a similar rant in "It's Christmas in Canada".
- Seeing Saddam Hussein in Hell with Satan becomes funnier after his eventual execution.
- A censored family-friendly version of Terrance and Phillip: Asses of Fire is replaced with the original and is only one minute long. A couple years later a family-friendly PG version of Freddy Got Fingered that was three minutes long was featured as an extra on VHS and DVD.
- When Terrance and Phillip are strapped into their electric chairs, Terrance comments that this is worse than the night Phillip sucked on his dick and took a picture. A similar situation would happen between Cartman and Butters in the episode "Cartman Sucks".
- When Conan O'Brien gets his "My God, What Have I Done?" moment after betraying Terrance and Phillip, he kills himself by jumping off the window and onto the hood of a car in a talk show disaster. Nearly 14 years later, the real O'Brien would voice talk show host David Endochrine, in a scene involving The Joker that would ultimately result in the talk show disaster that would end up killing David in the Animated Adaptation of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
  - And as if to reinforce the connection, South Park's O'Brien is voiced by Brent Spiner, who would later voice another version of the Joker.
- "Blame Canada" is Sheila's Villain Song and establishes her and the other moms as enemies of Canada (including Terrance and Philip). Years later, South Park: The Stick of Truth plays the song when the player character goes to Canada with the other kids to get help from Terrance and Philip, among other Canadians.
  - Likewise, the popularity of Nickelback and Justin Bieber make the song even more hilarious, and it's Cartman, one of the heroes of this movie, who gets Biebs killed in a later episode.
  - In the song, Carol laments that Kenny could've been a doctor had he not died. Always coming back aside, it turns out he did.
- Another one from The Stick of Truth: Kenny hardly sings in this movie (he only gets a few lines in the opening number, "Mountain Town"), but his "Furry Friends" attack in the game has him briefly sing a song while summoning his rats.^note The real kicker is that Furry Friends is an example of Disney Creatures of the Farce (complete with Kenny as a princess), which is based on the very thing that BL&U is parodying.
- When Cartman angrily demands who wants to touch him after seeing the Terrance and Philip movie, Butters (at that point an unnamed background kid^note) is the only one to do so. Rewatching this scene years later, after seeing their dynamic in later seasons makes it doubly funny.
- The last end credits song, "Through The Eyes of a Child", contains an interlude with these lyrics. Does This Remind You of Anything? from Pan's Labyrinth?
  Got an eye on my hand, I've got an eye on my hand
  I've got an eye on my hand, but still I can't find you
  Eye on my hand, where have you gone girl?
  Eye on my hand, I'm coming up behind you
  Eye on my hand, don't turn around now
  Cos I'm right there, I'm coming up behind you
Jerkass Woobie:
- Cartman, when he ended up with a V-Chip inside his brain that shocks him every time he swears, just because he sang a song against Kyle's mom.
- Even Satan, despite being considered evil by default, is sympathetic. His partner Saddam only wants sex with him and shows no effort in helping him take over the world. What's more, he's tired of living in Hell and wants to live a normal life on earth, showcased beautifully through the tear-jerking number "Up There".
- The Mole. He clearly didn't have the happiest childhood, considering his mom apparently tried to abort him on her own with a clothes hanger. It's implied that she's abused him ever since.
Hype Backlash: While the movie is still well-loved and stands out from the rest of South Park for being an all-out theatrical-ish musical, some fans find the more recent TV seasons to be more entertaining and/or relevant because they deal with more recent and familiar topical humor (and also have animation that's had years to mature since BL&U).
Misaimed Fandom: Mr. Garrison claiming that he "doesn't trust something that bleeds for five days and doesn't die" was a jab at sexist views on periods. People are now quoting it unironically.
Misattributed Song: "Hell Isn't Good", the song that plays when Kenny goes to hell, isn't by Metallica. It's by the band DVDA, though Metallica's lead singer James Hetfield does appear uncredited on the song.
Never Live It Down: While Sheila is Easily Forgiven for her crimes ( since Kenny wished for everything to be undone), some fans are not forgiving her for nearly ending the world.
Signature Scene:
- The classroom scene, which has received all manner of video edits.
- Kenny revealing his face and voice for the first time in the series.
Squick: Plenty to go around. It is a South Park production, after all. But one that stands out is the German Scheisse video Liane is shown to have starred in. We can only hope the boys whipped out the Brain Bleach.
Strawman Has a Point: Sheila and the other moms early on, as their kids were indeed being badly influenced by the movie and that Kenny died from imitating a stunt from it. They only become villains (well, Sheila, anyway) when they decide to blame Canada for their troubles.
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming us!
Suspiciously Similar Song:
- In keeping with the movie's Disney Animated Canon lampooning, "It's Easy, M'kay" is somewhat similar to "I Just Can't Wait to be King" (especially near the end).
- "Mountain Town (Reprise)" is similar to "Rainbow Connection (Reprise)" from The Muppet Movie, which is retroactively a Disney movie.
- "Up There" is a beat-for-beat recreation of "Out There" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- The new characters introduced in this movie (Gregory, The Mole, and Dr. Vosknocker, the V-Chip's inventor) never appeared again in the series proper, save for an extremely brief cameo for The Mole in "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub", where he's seen on Late Night with Conan O'Brien while Stan is channel surfing.
- Jesus lives in modern day South Park but is bizarrely absent from a movie about the Devil attacking the town. Here he makes one cameo amongst several other townspeople who've joined the army but his role isn't elaborated on in any way.
Unintentional Period Piece:
- Just like the rest of the show, the film is full of topical humor. But also, since South Park does musical numbers and episodes less frequently than The Simpsons and Family Guy, the fact that Bigger, Longer and Uncut is a musical might seem out of the left field to modern viewers. In fact, The Other Wiki says that it was intended as a spoof of the Disney Renaissance animated musicals, which was really big at the time but have long since faded away (although later hits like Tangled, Frozen and Encanto have given it a revival of sorts).
- Since the film was released just two years after the original series premiered, and a lot of the now-developed fourth grade students had been mainly Living Props or not even introduced yet, it may feel a bit weird viewing an adaptation which is roughly supposed to define South Park and seeing characters like Butters, Randy, Craig, Tweek, Tolkien, Timmy, Jimmy, and Bebe in the background or completely absent. Trey and Matt admitted in a Blu-ray commentary for the film that they themselves were not happy with the lack of focus on several now-important characters and stated they would there on start giving the background characters more development, and made it clear that any South Park movie made today would have them play a major role.
Values Dissonance: In 1999, Mr. Garrison calling Clyde a "complete retard" was the equivalent of him calling Clyde an idiot, but in The New '10s and The New '20s, the word "retard" has become decried as an incredibly offensive slur against people with autism, and is ironically worse than any of the curse words said by the children that Mr. Garrison is so shocked to hear. Then again, Mr. Garrison is a Politically Incorrect Villain.
Values Resonance:
- The movie's themes of Moral Guardians calling for censorship instead of taking responsibility for letting their kids consume age inappropriate media are just as relevant now as it was back during its release. Sheila's attitude of "Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words!" hasn't aged a day with the Moral Guardians who surfaced years later, as an episode in Season 21 bluntly pointed out.
- Saddam's emotional abuse of Satan was well ahead of the curve when it came to showing what abuse victims frequently have to live with.
- In the 90s, most gay characters were either the butt of jokes or tragic, doomed protagonists, both who commonly acted stereotypical and didn't have a personality outside of being gay. This film has four gay characters ^note and only one, Big Gay Al's, main gag is focused on this fact. Satan and Sadaam's relationship is a center plot point, but their personalities aren't based on their sexuality and the main joke isn't around them being a same-sex couple but on the Devil being the sensitive one in the couple and a real-life despot being portrayed as a goofy-talking Bastard Boyfriend. Mr. Garrison's sexuality is known to show viewers, but doesn't come up in the plot besides Satan's bit with Mr. Hat at the end. In a time where complex queer representation is seen as important in media, the movie passes the test surprisingly well by avoiding informed gayness but letting the characters/relationships be well-rounded.
The Woobie:
- Kyle, who has to save the world from a misguided moral crusade started by his own mother.
- Terrance and Phillip, who are arrested, sentenced to death, and ultimately shot dead, just for exercising their 1st Amendment rights (or whatever Canada's equivalent is). Technically, they did end up killing a child, but considering the kids were watching the movie without permission, and were emulating a scene where a character dies doing the exact same thing thus suggesting it was a bad idea...

YMMV / South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

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