Peanut butter and jelly, thunder and lighting, Beavis and Butt-Head. Some pairings just forever go together.
Huh-huh, you said pairings.
Ah yes, the moronic metalheads are back in their latest feature-length adventure, "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe," a surprisingly effective follow-up to 1996's "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" and an extension of the original "Beavis and Butt-Head" cartoon, a staple of 1990s MTV.
It's 1998 and not much at all has changed for the crude cartoon teenagers, who are still wearing their Metallica and AC/DC shirts, respectively. (Please never update their T-shirts, ever.) They still chortle at their own jokes, love nachos and are looking to score for the first time.
That quest to score leads them to the outer reaches of the universe, after a trip to Space Camp where they manipulate (huh-huh, you said manipulate) a piece of docking equipment to mimic intercourse, which leads to them being chosen for the space program.
In their heads, they think everything that unfolds is an elaborate prelude to sex with a female astronaut on the crew (voiced by Andrea Savage). It's a credit to writers Mike Judge (who still voices the doofus pair) and Lew Morton and the universe they've built for the one-minded horndogs that this perfectly inane scenario is able to hold narrative water.
The two fartknockers end up traveling through a black hole and are shot out into 2022, where they're confronted with modern realities such as iPhones (an extended gag with Siri is played well) and the concept of white privilege (one of the film's rockier bits). They're also visited by alternate universe versions of themselves, bald-headed and in flowing white robes, who inform them that no version of B&B throughout time and space has ever managed to score. That sucks!
Throughout, Beavis and Butt-Head are true to themselves, making fun of everything around them because they're too stupid to know any better but always getting the last laugh. The film doesn't try to change them for the times, but shows that what worked in the '90s (mostly) still works today. Huh-huh, that's pretty cool.
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'BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD DO THE UNIVERSE'
Grade: B
Rating: TV-14
Running time: 1:26
How to watch: Paramount+
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