THE NEXT GENERATION

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Trey Parker, 27, and Matt Stone, 26, have had the sort of Hollywood good fortune that must rank right up there on the wish list of slacker filmmakers with dinner invitations from Parker Posey. Former film students at the University of Colorado, Parker and Stone were trying to make a go of it in the movie business in 1995, when they got a call from Brian Graden, then an executive at Fox 2000, who offered them an intriguing project. In search of livelier-than-average holiday greetings, Graden commissioned the pair to make a video Christmas card for him to send to friends and colleagues. The result was The Spirit of Christmas, an animated short film that centered on four crude-acting, blob-shaped third-grade boys forced to intervene in a nasty fistfight between Jesus Christ and Santa Claus. The tape was a smash, passed around and copied endlessly in media circles in Los Angeles and New York City.

Parker and Stone soon amassed fans including George Clooney, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins and a number of Comedy Central executives who offered the pair an animated series based on characters in the film. The result, South Park, debuts on the cable channel Aug. 13 (10:00 p.m. ET).

The show is clearly the product of two minds that have clocked a fair number of hours watching the work of Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-head) and Matt Groening (The Simpsons). The four main characters--Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Kenny--have grating voices and feeble minds and show no aversion to scatological humor. The title, South Park, refers to the setting, a small hamlet where teachers are dolts, the mayor's first move in times of crisis is to call her personal stylist, and the school cook, in the show's wittiest turn, often breaks into imitation Barry White songs for no apparent reason.

What Parker and Stone want most, it seems, is to achieve the brilliant, bizarre randomness of The Simpsons. In one episode the boys encounter a mountain beast that weaves baskets. One of its arms is a stalk of celery; one of its legs is a full-figure replica of Step by Step star Patrick Duffy. Parker and Stone are not without broad imaginations, but South Park ultimately comes off as just so many out-of-nowhere jokes and images that don't take us anyplace.

The amalgam of clever references never really comes together, and it's hard to figure out what Parker and Stone are using their show to say beyond the fact that eight-year-old boys are silly and the world is filled with many useless celebrities. Unlike The Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-head, South Park is devoid of subtext--it isn't really about the emptiness of suburban life or the ugliness of youthful nihilism or the perniciousness of popular culture. Nevertheless, it can deliver many funny moments, and Parker and Stone may very well grow up someday to be a Judge or a Groening

--By Ginia Bellafante