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Dutton Ranch Episode 9 Recap:
South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut (1999)
Paramount rolled the dice on a South Park feature film being just as good as their animated hit show in 1999, and after pestering creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to make one, they finally relented and churned out this musical black comedy that has stood the test of time despite some dated references.
Offensive and sharply satirical, the movie’s plot is generally fine but often takes a back seat to the songs written by Parker and Marc Shaiman, a frequent collaborator of the late Rob Reiner. “I’m Super,” “Kyle’s Mom’s a Bitch,” “Uncle Fucka,” and “Blame Canada” are now all up there with the most beloved Broadway tracks. The latter failing to win an Academy Award for Best Song that year remains one of the Oscars’ greatest injustices. Parker and Stone later responded by mocking the winner, Phil Collins, in several episodes of the show, and to this day, one of the only non-music-related things that some people know about Collins is the urban legend that he divorced his wife by fax. The cultural impact of the South Park show and this movie cannot be overstated.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
For a lot of people, Spider-Man 2 remains the best of the wallcrawler’s movies. The second entry in Sam Raimi’s trilogy pits Peter Parker against scientist Dr. Otto Octavius, a sympathetic villain under the influence of mechanical tentacles after a fusion power demonstration gone wrong, and Alfred Molina plays Otto perfectly with a weary yet menacing approach that contrasts well with the first film’s sinister Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe).
Spider-Man 2 was a hit back in 2004 and often still makes it to the top five in superhero movie rankings, usually battling Christopher Nolan’s gritter The Dark Knight for supremacy, but Raimi’s movie set the blueprint for the Marvel Cinematic Universe that would get underway later in the decade with its clever balancing act of humor and outlandish action.
Armageddon (1998)
Brushing scientific accuracy, plausibility, subtlety, and realism straight into the nearest bin, Armageddon is a Michael Bay Experience of the highest order, boasting an incredible cast of actors who put 100% of their energy into a script with eye-watering lines like “You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn’t it?” and “Requesting permission to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
Armageddon makes up for dialing ludicrousness all the way up to 11 by having so much fun it should be illegal, as a bunch of blue-collar boys head up into space to stop a massive asteroid hitting Earth. While a more realistic take on this scenario would arrive many years later with Don’t Look Up, Armageddon knew exactly what kind of high-stakes shenanigans people paid their good money to see and delivered. It’s a guilty pleasure, but a classic guilty pleasure nonetheless.
