Few pieces of media have done a better job of reflecting — or, depending on how much faith you have in art’s ability to shape the public consciousness, contributing to — the mean-spirited cynicism of 21st century America than “South Park.” Trey Parker and Matt Stone have long embraced their Comedy Central series’ status as an equal opportunity offender, finding ways to satirize every demographic and belief system so cruelly that it’s impossible to argue that they’re discriminating against anyone. The only prevailing worldview in their two-dimensional universe is that believing in anything too sincerely makes you a sucker that’s begging to be mocked.
None of which is meant to diminish the show’s brilliance, as it often points its rhetorical knives at an unserious world that deserves the contempt. But it does make the earnestness of “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” more than a little surprising. Arthur Bradford’s new documentary follows Parker and Stone as they sink over $30 million of their own money (500% of what they initially budgeted) to rebuild and revitalize a kitschy Denver restaurant that inspired an iconic episode of “South Park.” It’s a story about an ill-advised business investment that nearly becomes catastrophic, two creative moguls who apply the same perfectionism to the themed restaurant business as their media empire, and most of all, what happens when one of the world’s most public cynics finds something worth believing in.
If you have to believe in something, you could do a lot worse than picking Casa Bonita as the subject of your idolatry. The 52,000 square foot pink castle is home to an endless labyrinth of caverns, grottos, mariachi bands, volcanos, stage performers, puppet shows, and cliff divers who jump into a 30,000 gallon pool every 20 minutes. The restaurant, which Parker and Stone refer to as a culinary Disneyland, shares virtually no cultural DNA with Mexico. But for the last 50 years, Coloradans have embraced it as a shining beacon of the weirdness that the state loves to flaunt.
Casa Bonita unsurprisingly experienced its heyday in the ’70s — in Parker’s words, it’s “a place stuck in 1973 that’s trying to be a place in the 1800s” — and was widely thought to have declined in quality after its initial owners sold the business in 1982. By the 2010s it was seen as a shell of its former self, and the COVID-19 pandemic proved to be the nail in the coffin for a business that was always associated with bad food that you tolerated for the sake of an in-person experience. Parker and Stone were perhaps its most prominent fans, having dined at the establishment as children and parodied it on their show. When they had the opportunity to buy it out of bankruptcy, it felt like destiny.
That destiny proved to be much, much more expensive than anyone could have predicted. As the documentary shows, the two men initially predicted that their investment in the restaurant would be a rounding error that could be chalked up to an act of service to the people of Colorado. After buying it for pennies on the dollar, they planned to spend $6 million restoring it to its original glory. But the bankruptcy auction prevented them from having a proper inspection, which kept them in the dark about the massive building’s many, many structural problems. Between replacing toxic HVAC units, clearing out mold, and rebuilding leaky pools, they quickly found themselves spending $32 million before they could even think about making their own creative changes.
Much of ‘¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!’ focuses on those nightmarish renovations and Parker’s creative overhaul of the restaurant’s entertainment, which he appeared to treat with as much seriousness as his Broadway productions. But the real core of the film is Parker’s nostalgic attachment to Casa Bonita, which drives him to keep sinking millions of his own dollars and years of his own life into a project that nobody else on earth would dare take on. While Stone is often seen as reluctant to keep pouring funds into what quickly became an albatross around his neck, he cites Parker’s insistence on seeing the best version of our world and determination to will it into existence as the driving forces that keep him invested. Sometimes it’s difficult to fathom this level of altruism coming from the voice of Eric Cartman. But when Parker chokes up talking about the joy that he receives from watching children run around Casa Bonita while forging their own childhood memories, it’s hard not to believe him.
The Colorado institution is now up and running again, with a wait list for reservations that currently sits around 600,000. Parker and Stone joked that they’ll have to make a lot more TV shows to pay off their ill-fated investment, but it’s entirely possible that Casa Bonita will be a bigger piece of their legacy than anything in their filmography.
Grade: B+
‘¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!’ screened at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival after premiering at Tribeca 2024. It opens in select theaters in Colorado on Friday, September 6 before expanding nationwide on September 13and streaming on Paramount+ this fall.
Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best reviews, streaming picks, and offers some new musings, all only available to subscribers.
