While South Park immediately became a big sensation in 1997, it seemed to fade pretty quickly. I remember thinking that its time had come when South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut hit movie screens in the summer of 1999. To me, it felt like the franchise’s last gasp, one big cash grab before fans moved on to the Next Big Thing.

Clearly I was wrong. Still on the air more than a decade later, South Park isn’t quite a sensation anymore, and it’s had its creative ups and downs over the years. Still, it remains a popular show that continues to provide more than occasional cleverness and biting humor.

Even though I’d grown weary of South Park by June 1999, I liked Uncut. The only factor that hindered my enjoyment of it was the crowd; it was a raucous group who simply went nuts over the material. As such, I was looking forward to seeing the movie at home so I could watch it without anyone kicking my chair due to their paroxysms of laughter.

Seeing Uncut on home video shows that my enjoyment of the movie definitely wasn't due to any hilarity contact-high. Despite the creative doldrums I'd sensed from the show the last few times I'd watched it prior to the summer of 1999, the show's creative force - Trey Parker and Matt Stone - were able to snap out of them for this sucker. Maybe the ability to do what they wanted to do without worrying about TV's constraints made a difference. Whatever the case, this film offers South Park as good as it ever was, and in some ways better.

It helps that Parker and Stone clearly felt a sense of purpose. I work for a school system and I grow increasingly weary of hearing various morons blame videogames, movies and TV for any number of societal ills that involve kids. I don't buy it myself, but these self-righteous idiots seem certain that if all anybody did was play Pac-man and watch the Care Bears, the world would be a perfect place.

Uncut takes on these boneheads with a scathing satirical attack on the notion that a movie can make that big a difference in a person's life. It nicely pinpoints the intolerance and smugness of these crusaders as it provides a rousing example of the exact kind of material against which they're fighting.

Chances are excellent that you'll never hear a more profane movie than Uncut. Geez, I don't even know if it'd be possible to pack more foul language into a film and still maintain an actual storyline; you'd have to just curse without stop. There's some "pro-decency" kind of website out there that keeps track of these things, and the writer allegedly actually counted the number of swear words in the movie. With the disc's captioning system, you can count them yourself and see if he's right!

Anyway, the profanity is integral to Uncut and quite amusing due to its nonstop pace. Could it seem like vulgarity for vulgarity's sake? Sure. It's difficult to define why I find the crudeness in this movie funny but thought the baseness of the crummier TV episodes was unamusing; it's just one of those intangible things. For whatever reason, it works, and works well in this film. Perhaps it's partially due to the immense glee with which the material is delivered.

Indeed, the joy behind the creation of this movie seems palpable. It's pretty clear that Parker and Stone were happy to be free of the limitations of TV, and they also seemed more than content to knock the so-called moral authorities down a few pegs. That they do, and they make a terrifically funny and entertaining movie at the same time.

And that's all I'm going to say about Uncut; to discuss it any more might give away some of the gags, and you're better off seeing them for yourself. Just remember: this film is rated "R" for some very good reasons: incessant profanity, animated nudity and extreme violence. Discussions of some pretty gross sexual themes are part of the equation as well, as is a character who has some rather harsh things to say about God; let's just say that you don't usually hear someone refer to Him in the ways offered in this film. The movie had to be trimmed to avoid an "NC-17," so one will assume that the final result comes pretty close to that rating. We're a long way from DisneyWorld here.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this single-sided, single-layered DVD; the image has been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. For better or for worse, the disc accurately replicated the original material, and for the most part, it looked pretty good.

It's rather difficult to really assess the quality of the picture simply because the source material was so crude. Although one would assume that Parker and Stone had a bigger budget for the film than they normally receive for the show, not much of a difference showed up on screen. Other than some nice computer-animated effects for scenes in heaven and hell, the film relied on the exact same style and quality of animation that we see on the TV program. To be honest, I though that was a good thing. Although the show's animation is terrible, to improve upon it much would be a huge distraction and not really make any sense, especially because some of the series' charm comes from the simple cut and paste look.

Still, because Uncut never looked very good, it could be tough to evaluate the quality of the film's image. Overall, I thought the DVD offered a fairly accurate representation of the intended look. Everything about it appeared flat and lacked much detail, but that's due to the crudeness of the material.

Sharpness was consistently solid and distinct; nothing leapt off the screen, but I witnessed no concerns related to softness, and the image seemed adequately defined. Moiré effects and jagged edges presented no concerns, and I detected no signs of edge enhancement. Print flaws remained minor. I saw an occasional speckle or bit of grit, but these popped up only a handful of times throughout the film, so they stayed firmly in the background.

Colors seemed decent but plain for the most part. Again, the computer imagery seen during the hell sequences presented a more vivid image, but overall, the hues were appropriately flat and bland. Black levels appeared reasonably deep and dense, while shadow detail was clear and logically opaque. Ultimately, Uncut won’t qualify as demo material, but it seemed to offer a fairly good picture based on the original material.

Uncut offered a pretty good Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. It's not a tremendously vivid mix but it did pretty nicely for itself. The quality of the sound was simply terrific; voices always sounded clear and natural - well, except for Kenny, of course - and effects seemed accurate and well-defined. The music appeared especially strong, which was important since Uncut was really a musical. Dynamic range was great - check out the thumping but clean bass during the brief rap version of "Uncle Fucka" - and it always sounded very smooth and lively.

As far as the soundstage went, it's good but nothing special. The music made nice use of the front channels and provided an active stereo mix that also offered some filler in the rear. Effects seemed fairly lively in the front as well, with some occasional good split surround usage. The rears were most active during the war scenes at the climax and in some of the hell segments, but they're a little quieter than they probably should be. Still, the quality was strong and the activity level of the various channels was good enough to rate an "B."

Don’t expect much in terms of extras. We get two trailers: theatrical and teaser. And that’s all she wrote!

Despite this paucity of extras, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut is a DVD I'm happy to have in my collection. While it's definitely not for everyone's taste - you might not want to trot it out when the family come to visit - it certainly will satisfy anyone who enjoys rather irreverent and gleefully crude comedy. The DVD provides good picture and audio, though it does disappoint in terms of supplements. Nonetheless, the movie’s the most important thing, and Uncut is a winner.

To rate this film visit the [Blu-Ray] review of SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT