It was a weekend filled with new releases and I saw several of them, but Friday required a bit of a disconnect. Sometimes you need something a little stupid as a palette cleanser after a rough day and there’s nobody better suited for that than Beavis and Butt-head.
Twenty-six years after the dull-witted duo did America, they skipped over the world, and the galaxy, and went straight to the Universe. Beavis and Butt-head are selected for a civilian astronaut assignment after being sent to a NASA Space Camp. Naturally, that doesn’t end well and the boys are jettisoned into a black hole that sends them through time to the present. The boys are still just looking to score, but their temporal displacement sends a dangerous ripple throughout the cosmos.
The premise is exactly as dumb as it sounds, but that’s what makes it so good. Mike Judge knows what he is doing and the screenplay from him, and Lewis Morton found the right tone for the story they developed with Guy and Ian Maxtone-Graham. We have seen plenty of “man out of time” stories throughout cinematic history, but there’s something special about applying a very iconic style of 90s humor to our modern society, especially if you have been around to witness both.
The simple joy of physical, base-level cartoon humor cannot be overstated and that’s something that directors John Rice and Albert Calleros understood very well. The idea that these two dumbasses are still solely focused on “scoring” is so ridiculous it’s perfect. In that light, it follows pretty closely in the footsteps of the 1996 movie with the boys following their desire to score into some dangerous territory. However, everything the first film did well, this one did even better.
Judge of course is at the helm for the key voices of Beavis and Butt-head and many alternate versions of the two, but the amazing Gary Cole also lends his sultry tones to the movie as do Phil LaMarr, Chi McBride, Andrea Savage, Tig Notaro, Stephen Root, and Chris Diamantopoulos.
I love complex and thought-provoking ideas that get brought to film. This certainly doesn’t fall under that umbrella, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it for exactly what it is.
Recommendation: Fans of the MTV show will find that not much has changed, in a good way. If you are looking for something to help you unplug, where you can just laugh at shots to the groin, this is the movie for you.
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