Beavis and Butt-Head take their fart jokes into outer space
With nostalgia more popular than ever in Hollywood, streaming service Paramount+ is bringing back foul mouthed 90s cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head.
The pair became cultural icons thanks to their MTV shorts that skewered pop videos, and would go on to duet with Cher, feature on Friends, and break home video records.
Twenty-five years after the first film, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, they’re back in feature form to explain where they’ve been. In 1998, the pair (both voiced by creator Mike Judge) are sent to space camp, where their stupidity is mistaken for intellect.
They end up on a mission, which they bungle and end up going through a black hole, arriving in 2022. Chased by the government and the governor of Texas, the pair’s only concern is finding the astronaut who they mistakenly believe agreed to have sex with them.
Nothing is reinvented here. Despite the advances in technology and attitudes, this is still mostly Judge’s creations laughing at words that sound vaguely rude.
One of the most surprising things is how little the formula has aged. The whole point of the characters is that they are clueless, so a fish out of water scenario is perfect. Secondly, the pair were always the butt of the joke (huh-huh, butt…), so scenes such as Butt-head misinterpreting a lesson about white privilege works better than it has any right to.
The plot is a bit thin: intergalactic elements aside, the chaotic road trip structure is basically the same as their previous film, and the supporting characters are mostly straight men for the boys to chuckle at.
Ultimately, the pair’s back and forth is enough to sustain eighty minutes, and there are small delights including a continually undermined government assistant voiced by Nat Faxon, and Smart Beavis and ButtHead, superior beings from a parallel universe who are still relatively dim.
Intended to kick off a series revival, Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe is an affectionate return to what made them icons.
The vulgar humour might be less subversive than it was 30 years ago, but with so many hits from that period ageing badly, it’s refreshing to see the self-destructive dweebs haven’t changed.