Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe (2022)
Movie rating: 7/10
It might sound odd to say I was hoping for a little more social commentary from a Beavis and Butt-Head movie. But this is a show that’s always been a smarter work of satire than it’s given credit for. Still, the duo’s second film, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, is as funny as you would hope, and I was laughing through most of its 87-minute running time. Creator and co-writer Mike Judge, who also voices the title characters, throws in science-fiction elements including the now all-but-obligatory multiverse shenanigans. The result isn’t anything groundbreaking, and nothing here is quite as side-splitting as Robert Stack’s FBI agent ordering repeated cavity searches in Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. But it’s an amusing diversion for an hour and a half that’s funnier than most comedies.
The film opens in 1998, when Beavis and Butt-Head burn down their school science fair. A judge takes pity on what he sees as disadvantaged youth and sends them to space camp (their reaction to the Johnson Space Center sign is precisely what you would expect). NASA astronaut Serena Ryan (voice of Andrea Savage) sees Beavis and Butt-Head obsessing over a docking simulator and suggests they might perform the actual maneuver in space, which they interpret as an offer of sex. Unsurprisingly, once in orbit aboard the shuttle, the two cause a catastrophe in space and end up getting sucked into a black hole, which sends them forward in time to 2022.
In that year they continue their single-minded attempt to “score” with Serena, now governor of Texas, who tries to kill them while U.S. government agents believing them to be aliens hope to dissect them. Meanwhile, smarter versions of Beavis and Butt-Head from a parallel universe appear to help their dumber counterparts prevent the destruction of the multiverse.
If this movie is about anything, it’s about the title characters’ obsession with sex, which another character notes with understatement they fixate on to an unhealthy degree. That, and Beavis and Butt-Head’s general stupidity, are the main drivers of the plot. In 2022, they learn you can pay for things with smartphones, attend a gender studies course, end up in jail—where Beavis’s Cornholio alter ego, which I stopped finding funny around the time I turned 12, causes a prison riot that ends in a hilariously appropriate way—and take part in a car chase. The latter includes an enjoyable needle drop with Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave”.
To its credit, the film manages to include character development for Beavis and Butt-Head, who re-examine their relationship after Beavis begins to resent Butt-Head’s lording it over him and Butt-Head mocks Beavis for falling head over heels in love with Serena. The scene where they split up is followed by an interlude soundtracked to Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You”. These guys might be stupid, horny idiots, but seeing them reconcile (come on, that’s not a spoiler) is legitimately heartwarming.
Probably the funniest scene is the one where both characters imagine how their lives will be different after they finally “score”. I had hoped Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe would address the COVID-19 pandemic, since that’s one of the biggest changes in our world today compared to the 1990s. Production of the film itself took place remotely over Zoom due to the pandemic. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t mention it at all. To be fair, if two dumb, sex-obsessed teen metalheads from the ’90s time-travelled to 2022, they might not notice there was a pandemic either—since by then almost no one was wearing masks anymore, and all ruling institutions were firmly committed to pretending the pandemic is over.
Bottom line: if you like Beavis and Butt-Head, you’ll like their second movie.