Comedy Central Home Video presents

South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season (Uncensored) (2007)

“Well, well, well, here we are Kyle. You tried to bail on our agreement, but I found you.”- Eric Cartman (Trey Parker)

Stars: Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Director: various

MPAA Rating: Not Rated for (adult language and situations)
Run Time: 05h:08m:00s
Release Date: 2008-08-12
Genre: television

Style Grade	Substance Grade	Image Transfer Grade	Audio Transfer Grade	Extras Grade
A-	A+	A	A	B-

 

DVD Review

Wow, has it really been 11 seasons since we first met Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Kenny in the tiny town of South Park, Colorado? Believe it or not, it sure has, and oh, how time flies when you’re having fun. These roughly drawn and animated little guys have been through quite a bit in 11 years, from Santa Claus fighting Jesus to Kenny being killed for the 1,000th time. Now, Comedy Central DVD allows us to explore the latest batch of 14 episodes in their great new box, South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season.

The season kicks off in grand style, thanks to With Apologies to Jesse Jackson. This season premiere finds Stan’s dad, Randy in a ton of trouble after he uses the “N” word on live TV. It isn’t long before this becomes another amazingly funny, Cartman-centric episode as our favorite fat kid simply can’t get enough of the “little person” that’s brought into the school to teach the kids sensitivity. More great Cartman fun is on tap for the wonderfully-titled Cartman Sucks, during which he manages to get “good friend” Butters into trouble. Cartman’s endless quest to humiliate Butters could easily have gotten old by now, but the numerous ways that Cartman goes about this keeps these episodes fresh.

Next, Lice Capades takes an Antz-like approach to things in that half of the running time is devoted to a close-up look at the lice that are invading the kids’ hair. We still get to see things from the kids’ point of view, but the meat of this story involves a louse named Travis and his quest to save his fellow lice from destruction. This is one of the funnier, yet more disgusting episodes in the set. In The Snuke, the citizens of South Park are preparing for a visit by Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton. This is actually one of the 11th season’s few misfires, but there’s still quite a bit of humor in watching Cartman’s rather unique terrorist interrogation techniques. Disc 1 concludes with Fantastic Easter Special, during which Stan demands to know the connection between the Easter Bunny and Jesus dying for our sins. His quest for knowledge leads Kyle and himself to travel to the Vatican, where they uncover secrets of Da Vinci Code proportions.

Disc 2 begins with D-Yikes, which focuses on the great Mrs. Garrison, who is dealing with being dumped by a selfish man yet again. While it’s always nice to see Mrs. Garrison in action, this episode turns into a by-the-numbers spoof of the movie 300, and, unfortunately, gets stale pretty quick. We get another movie spoof in Night of the Living Homeless, which riffs on zombie films, but then it’s back to more original material with Le Petit Tourette. This is more great Cartman fare, as he thinks that by faking Tourette’s Syndrome, he will get whatever he wants with no consequences. Sure, there’s plenty here to possibly offend those who have Tourette’s Syndrome, but Parker and Stone handle this in a much more humane than usual. The final episode on this disc, More Crap, is as scatological as it gets. Randy Marsh is the latest South Park hero, as he’s just taken the biggest crap the town has ever seen. Randy gets a little in over his head though, as he soon learns he’s no match for the world record holder of poop.

The third and final disc begins with one of the boldest, biggest episode arcs in South Park history, the three-part epic titled Imaginationland. While there are a few factors that get us to the central story and a subplot involving Cartman getting Kyle to do something crude to him, these three episodes epitomize the best the series has to offer when we are in Imaginationland. Fanboys everywhere will simply love seeing the hundreds of pop culture icons that appear in this world, both of the obvious and obscure variety. This is the rarest of episodes that almost demands repeat viewings, if only to try and pick out all of the characters that appear at some point in Imaginationland.

In Guitar Queer-O, it’s no surprise that the object of parody here is the popular video game Guitar Hero. Stan and Kyle break the record score playing the video game together, but Stan soon realizes that he’d be much better off with a different partner. This hilarious episode soon becomes a lesson in “be careful what you wish for,” as Stan is simply not as good at the game as he thought he’d be without Kyle by his side. The season finale, The List, involves the title piece of paper that the girls at school have drawn up to rank the boys in their class from ugliest to cutest. Cartman and Butters get their hands on the list and the hilarity that ensues is the perfect capper to another amazing season of what is still one of the funniest shows on TV.

Rating for Style: A-
Rating for Substance: A+

 

Image Transfer

	One
Aspect Ratio	1.33:1 - Full Frame
Original Aspect Ratio	yes
Anamorphic	no

Image Transfer Review: All 14 shows appear in their original full frame format and feature crisp, detailed images. Bright, colorful, animated images appear at all times, and there’s really nothing in the way of blemishes or print flaws.

Image Transfer Grade: A
 

Audio Transfer

	Language	Remote Access
DS 2.0	English	yes

Audio Transfer Review: The Dolby Digital 2.0 audio is of the same basic good quality as that of previous seasonal DVD releases for the show. The surrounds are surprisingly active, especially during the Imaginationaland episodes, and the dialogue is well-integrated into the overall mix.

Audio Transfer Grade: A 

Disc Extras

Animated menu
Scene Access with 60 cues and remote access
Subtitles/Captions in English
3 Other Trailer(s) featuring Kenny Vs. Spenny: Season One (Uncensored), Drawn Together: Season Three (Uncensored), Comedy Central’s TV Funhouse (Uncensored)
14 Feature/Episode commentaries by Trey Parker and Matt Stone
Packaging: Cardboard Tri-Fold
Picture Disc
3 Discs
1-Sided disc(s)
Layers: dual

Extra Extras:

1. Comedy Central Quickies

Extras Review: The extras aren’t anything special, but we do get mini-commentaries by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for all 14 episodes. These don’t run for much longer than five minutes, but the pair manage to tell some great production stories, and provide quite a bit of insight in such a short amount of time.

Disc 1 also has previews for other Comedy Central DVD releases and four Comedy Central Quickies, which are short, 2-minute clips from the Comedy Central shows, Lil’ Bush, The Daily Show, Reno 911!, and The Colbert Report.

Extras Grade: B-
 

Final Comments

Still going strong and with no signs of letting up quality-wise, we get to revisit another season of one of the most side-splitting TV series with South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season. All 14 episodes show up in slightly-better-than-broadcast-quality audio and video presentations, and we also get some funny mini-commentaries to spice up each show even more.

Chuck Aliaga 2008-08-12