If you saw the 2003 episode of South Park "Casa Bonita" and wondered if Cartman's beloved fantasy land of a Mexican restaurant with cliff divers and treasure caves was based on reality, the answer is surprisingly yes. Opened in 1973, it was a Denver-area mashup of Chi-Chi's and Disneyland. When it closed in the wake of the Fauci Flu scamdemic, it was feared to be gone forever and it went into bankruptcy.
But, to the surprise of no one South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, stepped up to buy Casa Bonita with the intention of renovating it to its former glory for future generations. Flush with net worths in the hundreds of millions between South Park and The Book of Mormon revenues, it would be a pricey endeavor, but not onerous. But decades of corporate disinterest in basic maintenance left it run down with duct tape on the carpet and many areas so sketchy in the safety department it makes one wonder how code enforcers hadn't shut it down ages ago? And the food was notoriously bad.
But they had no idea just how bad things were and the extremely expensive and lengthy project is documented in ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! by director Arthur Bradford whose excellent 2011 documentary 6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park showed how they managed to crank out episodes on a weekly basis - or used to; their current output is just six episodes per year with a handful of longer specials - starting with a blank whiteboard on a Thursday to shipping a finished, animated show the following Friday. With that past collaboration, he was naturally allowed close access to document the nightmarish process.
Built within a failed department store in a shopping center, Casa Bonita was cobbled together without a general architectural plan on the fly and those foundational decisions result in nearly everything needing to be gutted for basic safety. The HVAC systems are so filthy due to lack of cleaning and using flex ducts that when shaken, mounds of dirt spill out. A hawk in the bell tower has turned the roof into a pigeon graveyard. (There's even a shot of the hawk pursuing its prey.) The cliff dive pool had high-voltage lighting near the splash zone and the way divers exited is so tight and adjacent to an electrical box it's a miracle no one died. The kitchen needs to be completely gutted. As a result, the budget rockets to multiples of the original planned cost on top of the $3.1 million they spent buying this money pit.
But they soldier on, hiring an acclaimed local chef/restaurateur to revamp the menu to not be terrible and seeking to modernize the puppet show, animatronics, performers and characters and the overall artistic intent of the venue to retain what people remember fondly while improving the experience. While Parker made his fortune off of cartoons where foul-mouthed children hang out with talking pieces of crap, he has more sense than Disney seems to nowadays about what makes a magical experience for children at Casa Bonita. An early dry run goes badly, but the reactions of the real children customers shows that what may seem hokey to grownups is magical to kids.
Even though ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is as much an infomercial for the joint as a documentary about its return from the dead, it's still a fascinating portrait of how all one needs to keep dreams alive is the ability to see the shine through the grime. And tens of millions of dollars.
Score: 8/10. Catch it on Paramount+.
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