South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

In the 1990s, a generation of TV creatives emerged as the true heirs to the crazy cartoon anarchy of Looney Tunes: the creators of Beavis and Butt-Head, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and South Park brought the subversive potential of animated transgression into politically incorrect times. The minimal animation allows the highly adult South Park children's series to continue to offer real-time satire on the nonsense in popular culture and politics to this day. The (unfortunately) only movie spin-off preserved the delightfully jerky, reduced style of the TV series and, already at the turn of the millennium, painted a literal hellish scenario of ruling madness, beautifully accompanied by ludicrous musical interludes and garnished with self-reflective malice: An incorrect Canadian comedy that inspires the children of South Park brings the guardians of public morality onto the scene. Soon the US declares war on its neighbor, and then Satan and Saddam Hussein are already at the door. (C.H.)