Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me vs. South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut

We have before us, after a long drought, two excellent moron comedies which are of course different in many ways, but which share one essential similarity: subtitles set off by a colon. No, wait, I was thinking of how they both exemplify the continuing tendency among moron comedies to rely exclusively on grossness to get their involuntary laughter, as opposed to the constant violence or stupid puns characteristic of "Airplane" or "The Naked Gun." In "Austin Powers," we have, among other offenses against taste, the main character unknowingly sipping on pureed Number 2 and an enormous naked Scotsman carelessly dribbling detritus from a gnawed-on chicken wing all over his bare chest in a scene obviously taking place post-coitus with Heather Graham, which has the distinction of being the only scene in any movie ever to make me retch.

"South Park," not to be outdone, features a cartoon Saddam Hussein aggressively celebrating the love that dare not speak its name with the only Satan with intimacy and self-assertiveness issues that I have ever seen and an enormous cartoon clitoris that provides guidance at a crucial time to a main character. Some of you, who pay more attention or who have surplus brain cells to devote to this sort of thing, may remember that I had identified this trend a year ago, and it hasn't abated in any way. But these two movies promulgate and deal with this trend in different ways, and while they are both very enjoyable if you can sit through certain things, "South Park" is distinctly better.

"Austin Powers," Mike Myers's second opus in the series, has been hailed as the rare sequel which is funnier than the original, which is sort of strange to me as most of the parodic elements have been subordinated to a series of gags which mostly work and sometimes don't. The James Bond subversion and the satire of father-son relations in the first one were most of what I thought was funny about it. We still have a bit of the relationship between Dr. Evil (Myers) and his son Scott Evil, done very funnily on Jerry Springer, but the Bond-ing is lost in a sea of gags about Mini-Me (a small clone of Dr. Evil) and a whole bunch of set pieces for Dr. Evil, including two separate instances where he spends about five minutes total telling his son to shut up in various ways and a completely unexpected and wildly funny parody of "Just the Two of Us" (Will Smith's version), tailored to Dr. Evil's rejection of Scott and embrace of Mini-Me as his true heir.

Okay, so what is the problem? There are a few. Heather Graham, as the Powers girl (how weird does that sound?), is very pretty but completely inert; she's more expressive and believably flirtatious in publicity interviews. This wouldn't be such a problem except for the massive amount of time Austin Powers' (Myers) courtship of Ms. Graham takes up onscreen, which becomes therefore pretty boring and just an exercise in staring at Ms. Graham, which is more fun in action movies than in comedies. Fat Bastard (Myers), the above-mentioned Scotsman, is not funny and seems to be an ego play for Myers more than a viable comedic character. Finally, this movie is a devolution in the series: the first movie was tighter, more controlled, and relied more on humor than grossness to do its work. This movie is very funny in spots, but it's gone down the pure-grossness road to the point that it's very episodic and filled with dead spots where I was trying to find something to laugh at but couldn't. As funny as this is, the first one was more satisfying and enduring.

So is "South Park," which is basically a musical comedy with world-class profanity that is built around the play-within-a-play technique so old it's Shakespearean. A satire on the way "South Park" itself is viewed by parents' associations and the MPAA, the movie concerns a profane movie which the littl'uns watch and which causes even more profanity to issue forth from their mouths than is bleeped on the series. My favorite episodes of "South Park" have always been the ones where Trey Parker and Matt Stone gave full rein to their excellent satirical instincts, and while perhaps tolerance for profanity isn't the most admirable attitude satire has ever attempted to foster, it's good enough to make a kick-ass movie. I honestly did laugh pretty much constantly throughout this film: at the depiction of Kyle's mother, the apotheosis of the woman who thinks anything her son does is anyone's fault but her son's; at Cartman's famous sung characterization of her (how hard it is to continue on my chosen course of eschewing profanity as I review this film); at the casual bigotedness displayed at one point or another by almost everyone in the film and ridiculed constantly; even at the gross-out jokes mentioned above, which are robbed of some of their gross-out potential by their essential cartoonishness but are still quite funny. The musical numbers, by the way, are quite rousing and make this movie the best example of filmed musical comedy in what seems like a long time. This movie coheres, its jokes have points, it's incredibly profanely funny, and it features an uplifting anthem asking "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" In other words, it's everything a comedy should be.

Austin Powers:

Attractive Man Count: I am giving a -1 to Fat Bastard and a 0 to Austin for a grand negative total. That'll teach them to make me retch. -1.

Attractive Woman Count: 3.

Overall Grade: B+.

South Park:

Attractive Man Count: What?

Attractive Woman Count: You're kidding, right?

Overall Grade: A. Though pointless comedies can be quite enjoyable indeed, a point can often help.

Is it any wonder that I display a great affection for satire? Lindemann

I still really, really, really like "South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut." What I did not realize at the time I reviewed this was that I had an unquenchable affection for dirty Broadway-type songs. It is this specific affection that keeps me coming back to that film.

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