South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid (2021) Review

 "It's a farting rainbow with Tom Brady's signature."

-Randy Marsh

Stan, Kyle, and the others continue to work on finding a way to travel back in time to stop the pandemic from ever happening, but Cartman has no intention of losing his family, and will do anything he can to stop Stan and Kyle.

Spoilers below!!!!

What Works:

I was really excited for this movie to see what future Butters has been up to.  All we knew was that he was locked in an insane asylum.  I was not expecting him to be a parody of Michael Myers.  Grated, Butters doesn't actually kill anyone, he just leaves death, destruction, and...chaos in his wake.  It's a great idea and a lot of it is well executed.

The previous film hit me hard emotionally and the sequel does the same.  The arcs for Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Randy are all really well done and made me feel things.  Ultimately, this movie is about a group of former friends saving their friendship, and that story has a surprising amount of heart.

Cartman's story is actually the best of the bunch because over the course of the film, we realize that he was being genuine this entire time.  He really has become a better person and deeply cares about his faith and his family.  Everything he does in this movie is to protect his family, even when he does resort to his manipulative tactics.  To see where he ends up when they change the future is actually heartbreaking and tragic.

Finally, time travel stories are not always easy to pull off, but South Park does it well.  It's a strong and compelling narrative with a mostly solid ending, at least where the main characters are concerned.  We understand the motives and stakes for everyone involved and what could happen to them if they do travel through time.

What Sucks:

Most of the humor from this movie comes from Butters trying to get everyone into NFTs.  I'll admit that I don't know a whole lot about NFTs, so either the jokes went over my head or they weren't funny.  I'm not really sure which.  As a result, there weren't a ton of laughs to be found here.

I was really excited for the future versions of our cast to travel back in time and interact with their past selves.  Unfortunately, that only happens in one scene.  It felt like a missed opportunity and waste of a premise.

Finally, the ending message of the movie is that we should all cut each other more slack and forgive one another due to the stresses of the pandemic.  That's fine, until they bring in forgiving the capitol rioters, anti-maskers, and potentially anti-vaxxers.  F**k that.  Now is not the time to be forgiving of any of those people until they start doing better.

Verdict:

The Return of Covid was definitely a big step down from the first Post Covid movie.  While the story and emotional aspects of the movie are really sold, the humor is mostly absent, they don't do enough with the time travel, and I disagree with the message of the movie.  It's fun, but could have been better.

 7/10: Good