Beavis and Butthead Do the Universe Review
8/10
Remember comedy movies? There was a time when they flooded the box office. Most of them didn’t resonate with me much beyond the occasional chuckle, but they were a comforting presence. There was reliability to these movies. I could usually remember the comedy films I saw each year. After a while, they tended to blur together. There’s only a certain number of times you can see Will Ferrell playing a man baby before you lose the will to live. After a while, comedy films stopped dominating at the box office. People started to lose interest in them. You still get the occasional studio comedy gem, but I tend to remember the misfires more than the successes.
I think the public’s disinterest in typical studio comedies is partly thanks to the changing landscape of comedy itself. We over-analyze jokes and have become far more culturally jaded about the concept of laughter. This tendency is usually relegated to social media cesspools, but I notice it leaking into the mindsets of normal people too. We are so flooded with articles questioning whether you should laugh at something that we can sometimes forget the fact that comedy usually boils down to a simple question. Did I haha or not? There is a special kind of purity to Beavis and Butthead. It’s easy to dismiss the original series as sophomoric nonsense. It certainly can be that at times.
Within the immaturity and absurdity of the show is a wonderful embracing of idiocy. Beavis and Butthead are perfect goofy characters to make observations about the world. Their stupidity is so set in stone that there is no possibility of change. They just care about one thing in this film: to score with a woman. After so many years of these characters existing, that is still their ultimate purpose. There is something quite fantastic about that never-ending fruitless quest. Beavis and Butthead Do The Universe is a retread of similar territory. This time the boys are sent to space. Trying to explain why would ruin the magic.
They become infatuated with the astronaut Serena and through convoluted circumstances are soon sent forward in time to our current year. Many films have utilized time travel as a storytelling trope. It can be a lazy crutch when you can’t be bothered to think of another way to move the narrative forward. Here, the film embraces the silliness of putting these 90s characters in 2022. It helps that the film makes no effort to adapt the humor to fit our current sensibilities. Mike Judge knows how futile it would be to drastically alter Beavis and Butthead, so he instead leans into how out of place they are. There is one scene in particular that is easily the funniest moment of a film this year so far. Without getting too detailed, the boys wander into a gender studies class in 2022. What happens next manages to mock everyone simultaneously in a way you rarely see today in Hollywood comedies.
If you weren’t already on board with the original show’s brand of humor, this film will not change your mind. It is a glorious celebration of stupidity. My one main issue with the film is how the plot feels like an updated version of their last film, Do America. It plays out in a different way, but the story beats can feel like recycling. The plot points of Beavis and Butthead being seen as a threat by the U.S government and being chased across the country by federal officers is basically the same idea as the previous film. So, in that sense, it doesn’t do anything that hasn’t already been done before. That does seem appropriate given the characters’ purposeful lack of evolution.
There is one part that diverts from the norm in a way I wasn’t expecting. Beavis ends up embracing the possibility of a life beyond scoring. He starts pondering the idea of falling in love with Serena. A misguided unreciprocated love, mind you, but one he still feels. This brings some extra conflict into the story when Butthead doesn’t understand why Beavis is acting so weird. This extra element was enough to separate the film from what has come before. Re-watching the original series today, I am impressed by how subversive it could be. Sure it was dumb, but within that stupidity were keen insights into the absurdities of our world.
That is what makes the characters work so well. Their disinterest in the world around them can be a hilarious way to showcase just how ridiculous human behavior can be. It’s a shame Do the Universe hasn’t gotten much promotion. I only heard about it because I follow various film channels on YouTube. It seems like most people I know either don’t know about the film or don’t care enough to see it. Being on Paramount Plus on release doesn’t exactly help since there are far too many streaming services to keep up with. It’s been a long time since I laughed out loud watching a comedy film.
I’m hit and miss on Mike Judge’s film work. Often his loose style of writing can create a fractured and unengaging experience in his films. Here he embraces the cliches of the story and commits fully to making the dumbest possible Beavis and Butthead tale. It can feel overly familiar at times, but despite that, it’s a delightful watch. Unfortunately, this “will” gets in the way of the earlier “Will” and sounds redundant, unless you meant
