Category: Animated comedy/social commentary
---
South Park are an acquired taste, even for people of my generation. I remember when South Park first hit the screens in the late 90s and while all the uni kids loved the low-brow humour, the older generation made sure that South Park made the news for its ability to offend. And the church I was in at the time may or may not have had a thing or three to say about it as well.
But you have to give Trey Parker and Matt Stone credit. Where The Simpsons have gone on to die a slow, painful death after bowing down to the deity of political correctness, Parker and Stone have been able to keep the creative juices flowing BECAUSE they don't tow any line and let EVERYONE cop a serve.
So if you like offensive comedy as much as I do, this will be right up your alley.
There are two plots running side by side in this movie that eventually tie up. The minor plot is that Randy, Stan's father, needs his oven door fixed. However, because very few people know how to actually fix things anymore due to the proliferation of electronic entertainment devices, the only two handymen in South Park are able to charge what they want and become very rich. Randy attempts to buck the duopoly created by the handyment by going to a hardware store to find an illegal immigrant who will do the job for cheaper, but all he ends up finding are more professional men like himself who also need things fixed.
The professional men of the town then bemoan the fact that college didn’t teach them any actual life skills while charging them lots of money in loans that they're still paying off, to which end they attack the college…with a catapault that is still in its box…requiring a handyman to put together.
However, the major plot of this special is that there is another universe in which all of the residents in South Park are women of some differentiating characteristic, be they black, lesbian, male-identifying, etc, so in this alternate universe, Eric Cartman is a black woman, but still with the same potty mouth and bad attitude.
The episode starts with Cartman waking up screaming that he has been replaced by a diverse woman of colour because of machinations by Disney executive Kathleen Kennedy (who in reality is actually the president of Lucasfilm, not a Disney executive strictly speaking).
Cartman goes to school and relays his fears to his friends, who dismiss him and the concept of alternate universes as "lazy writing". Suddenly, a portal opens up where Cartman is transported in to the alternate universe, and the Cartman from the alternate universe is brought into our universe.
Then there are cutaways into the Disney offices where the Disney executives wonder if something is up with Kathleen Kennedy since she has been using her executive power to insert women who are "lame and gay", first into movies, but then into her food as well. For hilarity, this Kathleen Kennedy is styled on Cartman - so it's short and fat and has a potty mouth, but dresses like an executive woman.
It turns out that the Kathleen Kennedy the Disney executives are interacting with was teleported in from another universe by way of the "Panderstone", a stone locked away in the Disney office of Bob Iger that can instantly write movies that try to appeal to everyone. Our Kathleen Kennedy started using it as a quick and easy way of producing rehashed material, but then the hate mail that Kennedy received for the movies produced using the Panderstone caused her to rely on the Panderstone even more as a crutch, causing a portal to open and swap the Kathleen Kennedy's between alternate universes.
Cartman in the alternate universe finds himself being chased by our Kathleen Kennedy, and after a hilarious chase scene, they sit down and chat and reconcile their differences.
Back in our universe, everyone has twigged as to what has happened and try to find a way to get everyone back. Bob Iger realises that it was the Panderstone that caused the swap in the first place, but it turns out that the only way knowingly enter the Panderverse is to put the Panderstone in a wholesome place with a broken door…and guess who has a broken door? Randy Marsh and his oven!
Cartman and Kennedy are returned to their respective home universes, and Randy brings back dozens of handymen from the other universes as a way of ensuring there will always be a handyman available to keep costs down.
The film ends with a scene on an alien planet where Cartman wakes up screaming (matching the opening) and his alien mum walks in handing him a bowl of cereal made up of his friend Kyle that is talking to him pleading not to be eaten.
---
I have always appreciated the satirisation that South Park does of celebrities, celebrity culture, and even of good taste (even if it's not to mine). So if you love South Park, or even just appreciate from afar, you know exactly what you're getting.
And look - as a marketing ploy, mocking Kathleen Kennedy after all the string of Disney/Lucasfilm failures is genius. If satire doesn't involve just a hint of kicking someone after they've made some public falures, then is it even satire?
On that point, I haven't consumed anything produced by Disney or Disney + from the last decade, except for Turning Red, and I have relied on internet commentary to form my view of Disney in the current era. And that is mostly because I have no interest in adding ANOTHER subscription to my list of streaming services I already have.
But if I were to highlight some drawbacks, I'd say first that at 45 minutes, this feels a lot like an extended South Park episode, rather than a full-fledged film. It does feel a bit short - could it have gone a bit longer? Yes.
South Park: Joining The Panderverse ain't gonna win any Oscar awards, but it is good for a laugh!
STAR RATING: 3.75/5
No comments:
Post a Comment