Chris Feil's soundtrack series doesn't "Blame Canada" this week while he is at TIFF...
When Book of Mormon opened on Broadway, it was met with a fairly shocked response that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were able to create such an old-fashioned musical within their own foul-mouthed lexicon. It was as if people had quickly forgotten that they had already created a catchy and sweet musical on screen with South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. And this was a few years before musicals would be cool at the movies again and a bit of a “gotcha” joke on their fanbase expecting simple crudeness, so maybe it’s easy to forget just how gutsy the South Park movie was.
Bigger, Longer, and Uncut follows the traditional musical blueprint in with “I want” standards and dance breaks galore. Marc Shaiman collaborated with Parker and Stone here to help build a series of showstoppers to rival its contemporaries on the stage. Like Moulin Rouge! shortly after this, there was the question if South Park would be adapted for the stage. With songs so comfortably in the Rogers and Hammerstein mold, it’s easy to imagine a smooth transition. Take the opening “Mountain Town” number for example: central characters and environment establish, conflict teased, and the audience already has one melody stuck in their head.
Parker and Stone’s utter love for musicals is evident in every song. If you think they would be poking fun at the genre, you are dead wrong - it’s actually the bro quadrant of the audience that gets the finger pointed at them in this regard. In its catchy glee, the songs all but dare them to delight in something cultural taste has told them to abhor. It’s even more audacious than the flipside challenge they also ace: getting more prim and proper musical aficionados to toe-tap to a song such as “Uncle Fucker.”
Though perhaps that particular audience wasn’t ready to give something like South Park a complete pass given that the film came with the harsh reputation of the television show, something Book of Mormon didn’t really have to work against. That kind of half-step towards acceptance by the more traditional set can be seen in its Best Original Song nomination for “Blame Canada.” Oscar could hardly ignore an original musical in the category, but nevertheless one of the score’s most television (and conservative) friendly tunes. Even its dirtiest joke is tame by comparison to everything around it. But “Blame Canada” remains one of the film’s less impressive songs in both musicality and jokes.
For a number more emblematic of Bigger, Longer, and Uncut’s crass genius and classic showstopping, its underrated winner is Mr. Mackey’s “It’s Easy, M'Kay.” It’s one of the film’s more steadily pottymouthed songs, but in tone and crowd-pleasing chutzpah it is almost aggressively wholesome. A stage adaptation would have surely turned this into the tap number it desperately longs to be in its clever rhythm and grinning enthusiasm.
For all of its plentiful satire and offensiveness, the South Park film announced Parker and Stone’s tender and charming musical instincts. Had it not been early enough into the series’s landmark run before it became somewhat closer to the establishment, maybe its musical prowess could have been more appreciated by its own merit. Instead, it’s still mostly a footnote in the series’s now 20 year history. M'kay?
Previous Soundtracking Favorites:
Almost Famous
Young Adult
A Mighty Wind
Big Little Lies
Sister Act
...all installments can be found here!