“Wait, you’re cutting into his butt!”

Clare’s rating: Ah, Troma Studios. Where would we be without your gentle caress to soothe our gross out, stupid, no budget needs?

Clare’s review: Cannibal the Musical is a student film. Student films, as a general rule, NEVER get bought by production companies and widely released on video, but this little gem happens to be the brain child of a couple of ding dong college students who became the highly paid, wildly popular ding dong creators of South Park (Trey Parker and Matt Stone). Apparently, if you make more than a million dollars, every yahoo in show biz will line up at your door to try and buy whatever crap you may have lying around.

Now don’t get me wrong. Cannibal the Musical, while juvenile, slow-paced, poorly edited and badly acted, is totally worth seeing. It’s Trey Parker’s musical version of the famous (ok, famous in Colorado) case of Alfred Packer accused, convicted and eventually exonerated of killing and eating a group of miners (not minors) he was traveling with from Utah to Colorado way back when. While based on historical fact, there’s a whole lot of singing, dancing and horse loving that goes on in this flick that I’m pretty sure never really happened.

The songs are good, there are a couple of well done scenes and funny lines. Cannibal is worth looking for, if for no other reason then, to laugh at the horrific fake beards the characters parade around in. Plus it’s pretty entertaining to see how young, earnest and goofy both Trey and Matt were as wet behind the ears college kids who hadn’t yet hatched their plan to take over the world (or at least Comedy Central) one poorly drawn misfit 4th grader at a time.

The movie itself is half decent, mildly entertaining and, for a fricking student film, pretty damn good. The DVD version however is hilarious and really cool.

Justin’s rating: Shpedoinkle, indeed!

Justin’s review: In my opinion, there is no social issue of more important relevance than cannibalism. True, we have rampant theft, murder and Martin Sheen running The West Wing, but who *hasn’t* had a family member or friend used as a before-dinner appetizer? Or come home to find your spouse missing a key arm or leg that would otherwise be used to wash the dishes? Yes, cannibalism: the scrooge of the masses. Yet, granted that we’ve all visited Taco Bell in our lifetimes, we too are cannibals. Will there not be a film to champion our cause, to speak on our behalf, to show some really gruesome and fake scenes of people eating other people?

There will be that film, and there has been that film (depending on your location in the time/space continuum). Cannibal the Musical recounts the poignant tale of a group of really, really lost people who also like to break into song and dance from time to time. Although the double team of being a student film and a Troma release made me expect the same kind of quality I get from my daily stool, Cannibal just made my day by being pretty darn good. It’s got moments and lines of spleen-rupturing laughter; in fact, my apartment mannequin got somewhat disturbed at my manic giggling. The Mormon leader who kept making a grumpy guy take a “time out” struck a chord in my soul, as did the six naked men wrapped in blankets, trying to dry off and not get majorly weirded out at the same time.

Cannibal the Musical comes from the minds and acting (mis)talents of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Dian Bachar (best known as Squeak from BASEketball). Juvenile and amateur as this is, they do come through with comedic genius and quite a few catchy songs. “Shpedoinkle Day” and “The Trapper Song” are destined to become classics in musical history… well, at least I’ll be singing them tomorrow at work. And this of course being a twisted comedy, there’s a lot of strange stuff going on during the songs, so we’re not being bored waiting for the plot to advance. Hey, we’re already in a comedy about a famous cannibal, why not liven things up with a dance chorus to boot?

Nothing comes perfect with Cannibal; some of the sound is really faint, and there are a couple stretches where nothing funny or song-related happened. But man, when they reach an “Indian” village consisting of zany Japanese guys, the trip is all worth it. I have no idea what kind of sick person you’d have to be to like this film, but if South Park is a guilty pleasure of yours and you happen to like songs about snowman building that results in homicide, well, Cannibal the Musical is pretty much the only film for you.