Review of "Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe" (2022)
Incisive, Effective Satire of The First and Latest of the Worst Recent Decades
Immediately upon its 1993 debut, Beavis and Butt-head was an entertaining, occasionally insightful, often uproarious satire of a culture that was already losing its way exponentially even compared to the decade preceding it. Its titular characters were puerile, literally juvenile, heavy metal fans with neither intellectual nor social flair, with a penchant for crude name calling and adolescent fixations, sexual and otherwise. Created by Mike Judge, who also voiced the titular characters, it mirrored the headlines and streets in eerie ways well beyond the stereotypes of adolescent males and metalheads. It led to a decent feature film from Paramount Pictures, 1996’s Beavis and Butt-head Do America. The series and feature were comedies in both the modern and Aristotelian senses.
Due to a dispute with the series’s network, MTV, Judge and company stopped producing content later in the decade. Absent an occasional return (such as a new season in 2011), no one heard much from the not-so-dynamic duo since 1997.
Until now, that is.
Judge has returned with a new feature-length opus streaming on Paramount +. Unlike the 1996 film, Judge is not the director; John Rice and Albert Calleros direct. Fortunately, Judge co-wrote the film with long-time Beavis and Butt-head writers Guy Maxtone-Graham and Ian Maxtone-Graham as well as Lewis Morton. Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe easily exceeds its feature-length predecessor in quality. In today’s wasteland of entertainment (there is precious little art), almost all of which is forgettable at best, that alone is notable. But, like the original series in its best moments, there is slightly more esoterica than most of today’s culture, too.
Our story begins in 1998. Beavis and Butt-head engage in their quotidian behavior at the science fair in their Highland, Texas high school. The science fair prize is a trip to space camp. During their shenanigans, they essentially destroy the science fair and its records. Appearing in court to answer to county government for their destruction, the judge issues a decision that horrifies spectators. (One is familiar Coach Bradley Buzzcut, absent from the feature film, who unfortunately has no lines in this one, either.) Espousing a view of modern “liberalism”, he opines that the defendants misbehave only or primarily because they are victims of society wanting in wealth and nurturing. Since they destroyed the records of the science fair, the victor could not be determined. He sentences Beavis and Butt-head to attend the science fair and receive the wealth and nurture that would putatively transfigure the destructive ignoramuses into the kind of more earnest, learned citizen that was presumably the standard in 1998 (according to county judges, anyway). That earnestness and erudition doesn’t transpire, but the two do develop an infatuation with Serena Ryan (Andrea Savage), a scientist at space camp who shortly leads an expedition with them into space. During the flight, Beavis and Butt-head continue to destroy, depleting stored oxygen and necessitating the sacrifice of two of the seven people on the mission to ensure the safe return to Earth of the other five. After some soul-searching (and more mindless destruction from Beavis and Butt-head), Ryan decides to send the teenagers into the depths of outer space. Instead of perishing, they are sucked into a black hole … which sends them to Texas in the year 2022 …
… where Ryan is campaigning to be re-elected governor. Horrified and mortified that Beavis and Butt-head are alive, she resolves to kill them before they can cause her more inconvenience. Soon, the Deep State is on their trail (again). Two intergalactic doppelgängers of Beavis and Butt-head, intelligent counterparts from another world, articulately inform them that they must enter an interstellar portal on Mount Everest in a short period of time to avoid cataclysm.
It is beyond a treat for any fan of the original series to see Judge and company lampoon the year(s) of Critical Race Theory, “smartphones”, Siri, Apple Pay, and … streaming services. Even the boys’ constant AC/DC and Metallica shirts remind the viewer what hasn’t really changed, as music (and all of culture) has frozen into endless nostalgia and legacy acts/franchises since 1997.
One of the more perspicacious commenters in the 1990s (whose name I cannot remember, unfortunately) interpreted Beavis and Butt-head as a satire on Generation X (not primarily anything so specific as adolescent male metalheads). I think he was right. The show and movies are something of a prequel to Judge’s 2006 futuristic dystopia Idiocracy. Two decades plus after the original series, many (most?) adults today who laughed at Beavis and Butt-head, thinking the jokes were at others’ expense, could have been laughing at themselves. Even more than in the Nineties, our culture is essentially Fun with Dick and Jane without the grammar and with George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” (but not George’s politically incorrect philosophy and intellectual independence). Too many adults today routinely behave like even cruder, less clever iterations of Beavis and Butt-head, and laugh and insult as often and as inappropriately. Considering the absence of the Carlin Seven (and for other reasons as well), Beavis and Butt-head’s “fart knocker” and “dill weed” would be classier and more dignified compared to most “adult” discourse today. In one of the more erudite thematic points, the smart alien counterparts of Beavis and Butt-head move the intergalactic portal from Mount Everest to much closer to home. In order to hide it from others, they place it behind the classics department of the local university, where nobody will see it due to the proclivities of most people and the culture of well-paying STEM jobs and penurious humanities majors. (It should go without saying that all of the iterations of Beavis and Butt-head dramatize the consequences of that culture.)
2022 could use more satire like this. In one of the most effective scenes, the creators dramatize some of the more absurd implications of Critical Race Theory and “white privilege”. (Imagine the characters’ surprise, elation, and response when told they have the latter.)
I recommend Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe with some reservations (perhaps inevitable with almost any twenty-first century work). As I noticed while recently re-watching the 1996 feature, the satire works better in the short episodes of the series, and that is still true to an extent, though less so with the new feature. (E.g., the shots of Coach Buzzcut are sometimes uncannily similar to Stanley Kubrick’s framing of R. Lee Ermey and his performance in Full Metal Jacket.) The gags and japes can be too sophomoric and repetitive at times. The entire phenomenon can be viewed as a snarkier Forrest Gump, a different kind of Nineties paean to the bliss of ignorance—even though the ignorance is ridiculed. Beavis, the significantly kinder and gentler half of the duo, is also even stupider than the surlier Butt-head. Maybe you had to be there at the time to appreciate it all, as Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris reportedly said to young fans nonplussed by his enthusiasm for early Genesis. Maybe you didn’t. It’s certainly worth a sampling if you’re not familiar. This movie is required viewing if you’re any kind of a fan.
All of these cavils are insignificant considering a broader context. This movie is worth a sampling if you’re not familiar; it is required viewing if you’re any kind of a fan. Consistent with a comedy in the Aristotelian sense, the universe of Beavis and Butt-head, including the latest movie, is broadly benevolent. While the two destroy a lot of property, they rarely, if ever, permanently damage any persons. Not only does it ridicule modish modern ignorance, but the smart incarnation of the nice guy is the only one of the four Beavises and Butt-heads who ever “scores” (to use their crude argot). Perhaps that was intended as a refutation of many cultural clichés and tropes. Also in accordance with that benevolence, none of the unprecedented and most heinous, tyrannous, asinine, and nonsensical aspects of the past few years—masks, “social distancing”, mandates, etc.—are so much as mentioned. I did not spot a single mask in the 2022 scenes, and no one asks Beavis and Butt-head for a “passport” they could not possibly proffer.
In a relatively decent culture (perhaps one as late as the original Beavis and Butt-head), Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe would be a qualified success. In ours, it’s an unqualified success. At the very least, Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe reminds us that not every sequel or adaptation need be nostalgic.
Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe
Produced by Matthew Mahoney
Story by Mike Judge, Guy Maxtone-Graham, Ian Maxtone-Graham, and Lewis Morton
Screenplay by Mike Judge and Lewis Morton
Based on characters created by Mike Judge
Directed by John Rice and Albert Calleros
Starring Mike Judge, Gary Cole, and Nat Faxon
2022
87 minutes
Rated TV-14
Available streaming on Paramount +