Now that The Simpsons Movie, any attempt to bring half-hour cartoon series charms to a bigger, more ambitious canvas always runs the risk of drowning out what made the show unique in the first place.
One of the most notable instances of a series avoiding this fate came in the form of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. As a feature-length continuation of the Comedy Central phenomenon, the first South Park movie seemed destined for failure back when the project was announced. After all, as a television show, South Park was a scrappy program with intentionally bad animation and a crude sense of humor. These qualities made for great small-screen comedy but could easily have become grating when forced to fill the theatrical scope and the extended runtime of a feature-length movie.
Featuring some of South Park’s best gags ever, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was a distillation of the show’s appeal. As goofy and silly as the TV series but filled with surprisingly smart satirical commentary on censorship, international relations, and religion, South Park’s first movie was a real achievement. Therefore, it was surprising that South Park didn’t return to feature-length storytelling for decades. In August 2021, however, the show's creators announced 14 new South Park movies were in the works. Unfortunately, the first of these features failed to recapture the feel of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. However, these new movies can improved as they let go of attempts at topical satire and embrace more ambitious storytelling.
South Park’s Movie Deal Explained
Per their deal with Paramount, South Park season 25, released in early 2022, featured a return to more up-to-the-minute satire with traditionally shorter episodes. However, the approach that the next South Park movies will take is not yet clear.
Why Post-COVID Worked Better Than The Pandemic/Vaccination Special
With the two-part "Post-COVID" saga, the South Park team avoided the intensely up-to-date COVID-centric jokes of "The Pandemic Special" and "South ParQ’s Vaccination Special" for something closer to South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. The "Post-COVID" saga's immersive, cohesive story depicts South Park's Cartman, Kenny, Stan, and Kyle as adults for the first time, mining its humor from the unlikely sight of Eric Cartman turning out to be a big-hearted family man and a devout believer. As this summary indicates, the "Post-COVID" saga worked better for fans who care about the show's characters than it did for viewers expecting jokes about current events.
South Park’s subversive Cold War plot in Season 25 proved that the show can still effectively comment on political issues as they unfold, but the "Post-COVID" saga succeeded precisely because its best moments, like Kyle's frustration with Cartman, an unhinged Butters becoming a demented NFT salesman, and Kenny's poignant plan, were more rooted in South Park lore than in the most recent, up-to-the-minute world news and the latest celebrity gossip.
South Park’s First Movie Is A Perfect Guide
The musical movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut remains the Oscar-nominated gold standard when it comes to feature-length adaptations of prime-time adult animated cartoons, with the four Futurama movies trailing behind. The first South Park movie succeeds because it satirizes timeless subjects — primarily censorship, but also religion and war— and focuses its plot on South Park’s characters, rather than trying to be intensely topical. The story of South Park's young heroes trying to stop Kyle's over-zealous mother from leading the US into a war with Canada is too absurd to be tied to the specific zeitgeist of 1999, and crass gags like Chef telling the kids to search for the clitoris to understand women didn't date the movie the way South Park's individual episode plots do.
In contrast, South Park season 25's Ukraine/Russia satire works precisely because the story is limited to a 20-minute episode. For South Park’s new movies to succeed, these feature-length specials should use their longer runtimes to tell stories like the "Post-COVID" saga's surprisingly moving insight into the adult lives of Kyle, Stan, and company, or the first South Park movie's ambitious tale of Kenny dying, arriving in Hell, befriending Satan, and eventually saving the world.
South Park’s Seasons Can Still Tell Timely Stories
Written, produced, and released week by week, South Park can still use the show's regular episodes to tell timely stories while the movies take on bigger, more ambitious ideas. It might be tempting to use each of South Park’s movies to take on a different issue like vaccination or the COVID-19 pandemic, but the underwhelming critical reception of "The Pandemic Special" and "South ParQ’s Vaccination Special" proves this isn’t a guaranteed win. Not only that, but the fact that South Park has attempted to tell longer stories via serialization proves that the show's creators know how to cast the show's heroes in a bigger, more sprawling saga. In recent seasons, South Park’s serialized stories allowed the show to tell longer plots over an extended period, but the show’s reliance on gags based on current events meant that often these stories ended up falling flat near their conclusion.
In contrast, the show’s movie spinoffs don’t run the same risk as South Park serializing its stories since the movies can tell one self-contained plot in one outing, rather than having to change the story’s events week by week depending on the news. South Park’s movies should focus on big ideas, like Kenny's many deaths having a secret purpose or the thought that the show's comedic neglect of Butters eventually has dramatic consequences later in life, as the "Post-COVID" saga did. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut's relentless attacks on the media, the U.S. government, and even corporations like Microsoft have proven that these character-focused stories still leave plenty of room for social commentary. Attempting to comment on hot button issues with a medium as slow-moving as feature-length movies is a fool’s errand, but telling bigger, more ambitious stores would allow South Park to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the movie format.