It's Easy, Mmmkay

From the sounds of the soundtrack for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, when Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to take their vulgarian cartoon to the big screen, they decided to take to heart Milhouse's immortal words to Bart: "Let's go crazy, Broadway style!" And so the film's original songs parody the Great White Way and movie musicals, forms that South Park's core audience ignores — they prefer rap and metal, usually mixed together. That's what the second half of the record is all about: rap interpretations of songs from the film, along with a couple of songs that were simply inspired by the film. Unsurprisingly, the second half doesn't really sit well with the show-tune pretensions of the first half, even if all the recordings are meant in jest. The original tunes are kind of funny, at first, but the joke wears thin pretty quickly with repeated listens. Marc Shaiman has helped Parker turn in some particularly wicked satires, particularly with "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" and the opening revue, "Mountain Town," not to mention the Michael McDonald showcase, "Eyes of a Child." Still, as the lavish revamping of the classic "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch" illustrates, Parker's melodies sound better as schoolyard ditties. Consequently, the first half is sporadically funny, but it's hard to imagine playing it more than once or twice. In contrast, the second half is hard to sit through once, with the exception of Violent Femmes, Isaac Hayes, and RuPaul, not coincidentally the only songs not reinterpreting the soundtrack. The rest is ludicrously profane, pandering hip-hop; it's all tossed-off and careless, not even containing clever cussing. It's a record that pleases nobody, even if Parker and Stone should be commended for at least trying something different with their gonzo send-ups.

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