The Makers of this Film Need Your Money More than You Do

Rating: 1/10 (6 July 1999)

The cleverest -- and, curiously enough, the most offensive -- thing about the "South Park" movie was in tacking on a mendacious "message" about free speech: a cheap gimmick for sanctimonious self-justification, letting the writers masquerade their shortcomings as virtues (they can't come up with anything better than to repeat words they think are "naughty"; and they probably giggled the whole time they wrote it, not only at their childish "naughtiness" but at those who would get suckered in and throw their -- or their parents' -- hard-earned money at it). Fans of this movie should save their $$$ and create their own fun by making milk squirt out their nose, or by kicking the crutches out from under a cripple, or "experimenting" on a puppy, or taking a mirror to their outhouses to watch themselves defecate. If you think the Constitution needs protecting, defend Constitutional amendments legitimately in danger, like the Second and the Tenth; if, on the other hand, you just want to go laugh at stupid noisomeness, fine -- but don't weary the rest of us with the pretense that a movie with no redeeming social value, pandering to people whose sense of humor has never graduated second grade and who have no self-respect, is somehow defending fundamental freedoms. "South Park" has its share of laughs, depending on what group you hate enough to laugh at; but when it makes its mawkish preachments it only induces nausea.