Review of Cannibal! The Musical (1996) by Tyler S — 22 Apr 2013

The film started out with a very brief scene of gore that was expected, but then quickly evolved into a very promising genre-savvy parody of movie musical westerns like "Paint Your Wagon," only to fall apart at the end and rely too much on cheap grossout humor.

The gore effects were a valiant effort but were inconsistent, and also added little to the story. When the gore effects were more realistic, it gave the feel of some sort of double-bluff fake snuff film like "Cannibal Holocaust" which would have been brilliant, except it wears off quickly when you see some of the other scenes with painfully fake rubber bodies being ripped apart with cartoonish ease. I got the distinct sense that Parker and Stone couldn't decide what they actually wanted this movie to be when it reveals itself, and what begins as a tight narrative ends in a clumsy ending.

Of the ending I would say that it was unclear if they were going for genre-savvy or genre-naive, but the presentation looks more like the latter. They seem to just throw up their hands and give up with a very un-imaginitive Western gallows rescue scene. I feel no compunction whatsoever in spoiling the ending because there is nothing about it you haven't seen before.

The songs were probably the best thing about the movie, although Trey Parker's voice has all the subtlety of a cheese grater. He can hit the notes, but he hits them like a semi truck hitting a cloud of gnats with a cutting, nasal tenor.

The humor was usually cheesy and cloddish, though there were a few clever jokes here and there that got a laugh out of me. On the whole I watched this film pretty well straight-faced.

There you have it. A few catchy songs, a few fairly good gore effects mixed in with some dreadful ones, and a handful of moments that were sort of funny. That's all there is to see here.