User Reviews

South Park the Hits: Volume 1 – "Casa Bonita" (Season 7, 2003)

Brilliant Cartman episode, Cartman and Kyle, Cartman and Butters in Casa Bonita, certainly an episode that shows who is Eric Cartman.

For Trey Parker and Matt Stone Casa Bonita was like the greatest place on earth when they were kids and for Cartman Casa Bonita is the same. First part of who is Cartman: "when have I ever ripped on you for being a Jew?" says to Cartman to Kyle! Kyle is having his birthday party at Casa Bonita and he can take three friends then he invites Stan, Kenny and Butters so Cartman will be nice to Kyle but he certainly don't understand the difference between being nice and wear a nice sweeter! But Cartman will be mature, he knows that now Kyle has to take Butters and he only wishes that things can still be cool with Kyle, Cartman succeed and now he knows that if Butters can't go to Casa Bonita for some reason he can take Butters' place. Second part of who is Cartman: the Cartman and Butters story, more hilarious stuff with these two, of course is again "poor Butters", is really cute his town and again Butters at one point was like "Eric you're the best friend in the whole world, I love you". Third an last part of who is Cartman: finally Cartman is in Casa Bonita again, but now everyone knows who is responsible for Butters missing and Cartman enters to Casa Bonita when the runtime marks about 20 minutes, is all very fast, impossible to really enjoy, then is this: "well kid you made an entire town panic, you lost all your friends and now you're going to juvenile hall for a week, was it worth it?" "Totally".

Then is this a really fantastic episode and a good choice for the collection of hits? Totally.

I saw about half of this "South Park" episode before seeing the whole thing and it's very satisfying to be able to see the entire episode. This is great probably because of how it focuses on Butters, my favorite character. I believe Casa Bonita is a real place (well, I looked at the questions right here of course) and this episode features Cartman trying to get rid of Butters so he can go there for Kyle's birthday instead of him. The funniest part might have been when Cartman beat up Jimmy because he was trying to be nice by saying Jimmy was saying bad things about Kyle. He keeps going from place to place to hide Butters. They actually refer to him by his real name Leopold.

Butters is as cute as ever and I especially love how willing he is to go and want to repopulate the Earth and everything. I'm not quite sure how Cartman got the way he looked, all scruffed up. It doesn't matter, because the ending is pure gold. It features Cartman going to Casa Bonita for literally only a few minutes before he gets arrested. He's then asked by the police if doing all that he did just to spend mere minutes at his favorite restaurant he responds, "Totally". It was certainly worth it to see the whole episode. ****

Warning do not read unless seen episode.

This is another favorite episode of mine, once again Cartman is just at his best (or worst). One of the things about Cartman that's his Achilles heel is he's has a mindset that things are always going to go his way, that he's always going to get whatever he wants. But that's not how life works, as Lincoln Hawk once said, "Life don't go one way for nobody." Cartman never learns that or just doesn't want to.

As we see Cartman's selfishness and villainy is just at its absolute peak when he concocts a dastardly scheme to get Butters out of the picture, so he can go to Casa Bonita which is sort of a Mexican Restaurant version of "Chucky Cheese". And so Cartman is preying on Butter's ignorance as he makes him constantly believe in a Fallout scenario and locking him into a Bomb Shelter all to satisfy his own petty desires; this kid just has no moral qualms.

The episode sort of plays out like a suspense thriller, there is a double layer of suspense. On one hand we as usual don't want Cartman to get away with it, due to how badly he treats others he doesn't deserve to go and have a good time at Casa Bonita. But on another hand, you kind of want to see this guy succeed, because his plan is still working well you expect a payoff.

However, it's not just Cartman's episode it's also Butters as we see how he's dealing with the fake Fallout scenario he still buys into. It's just funny and maybe a little sad as it just never crossed Butters poor for brains mind once he's been duped, it's times like that I just want to shake this kid and say "wake up and tune into CNN"; seriously he never went beyond the dump or even tried finding the manager's office. Let alone even before he went into the shelter, he didn't once turn on the news to check any report about an oncoming meteor, or why Cartman didn't get anyone else, man Butters circuity just isn't firing. I like how we see he tries to rebuild society by making buildings and establishments out of the parts in the dump, which kind of remind me of Toxie's Shack from the film "The Toxic Avenger".

The final minutes are just hilarious as we see Cartman despite knowing the jig is up he is still determined to have his good time no matter what. And of course, Cartman we see is just zipping though the place to have a good time despite how little it is. You can say in Cartman's case, it was all a small price to pay for a very short good time.

Rating: 4 stars