‘?Casa Bonita Mi Amor!’ Trailer: ‘South Park’ Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone Resurrect a Beloved Mexican Restaurant in Documentary

It’s “Kitchen Nightmares,” “South Park” style.

Documentary “?Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” takes the animated fandom of the dining establishment Casa Bonita and uses it to revitalize the real-life eatery. Described as the “Disneyland of Mexican restaurants,” Casa Bonita opened in 1974 in a Colorado strip mall. The infamous restaurant was featured in a classic 2003 episode of “South Park,” which IndieWire called the best episode of “South Park” ever, and in the 2017 video game “South Park: The Fractured but Whole.”

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Series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone later stepped up to save Casa Bonita after learning that the restaurant was on the verge of bankruptcy. With $40 million, the eatery was restored. Their journey to reopen Casa Bonita in May 2023 was captured in documentary “?Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,” which premiered at Tribeca 2024, where it won the Audience Award. The documentary will also screen at Telluride.

“?Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” is directed by Arthur Bradford and is produced by Sweet Relief in association with MTV Documentary Films. Jennifer Ollman produces, with Bradford and Keith Pizzi executive producing along with co-executive producers Afshin Beyzaee and Vernon Chatman.

“We want to buy Casa Bonita and treat it right. I feel like it was neglected even before the pandemic,” Parker told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “We are absolutely trying to buy it. We are going to do everything we can. We want to make it right and make it amazing.”

Parker added, “It’s just sitting there. It sucks. For a moment when it was like, ‘Casa Bonita is going to close down,’ we said, ‘We’re going to go buy it.’ And I felt like it was the crowning achievement of my life.”

The trailer for the film shows Parker and Stone realizing the extent of the repairs and renovations necessary to make it a functioning restaurant again and how they may be in over their head.

The sale of the restaurant was announced shortly after the “South Park” co-creators landed a $900-million deal with ViacomCBS to continue the animated series through 2027 and launch 14 “South Park” features to exclusively stream on the Paramount+ streaming app.

“?Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” premieres September 6 in Denver with a subsequent rollout in select U.S. cities, including New York and Los Angeles, on September 13 through Alamo. It will have its streaming debut on Paramount+ this fall. Check out the trailer below.

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