BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD DO AMERICA
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1996) **1/2 (out of four)
Yes, three years after everybody stopped caring about the show, out comes the "Beavis and Butt-head" movie, an animated ode to the onslaught of stupidity the teenagers of America eagerly embrace. If you can allow yourself to embrace it for 78 minutes or so, you'll find a lot of entertainment in Beavis and Butt-head Do America. It's no intellectual satire of the times, but it does have its moments. And let's face it, creator/director Mike Judge could have released a blank screen and still made 100 million bucks.
I'm assuming that you, as a literate person, have at least some idea of the premise behind the "Beavis and Butt-head" show and its ensuing movie. Over 100 half-hour episodes have chronicled the exploits of these two teenagers, Beavis the stupid blond-haired one, Butt-head the stupid dark-haired one. Both of them high school freshman, they go through life watching music videos, laughing at every possible double entendre phrase in the book, and hoping against hope that one day they'll score with a chick.
The show has its share of critics, but nearly every teenaged boy gets hooked into it at some time or another. I fell victim to the show over three years ago, at the age of 15, before the show became clich and I grew up at least a little bit. I've seen about every episode since but can't really call myself a fan, as I doubt anyone with a 100+ I.Q. can. I was still looking forward to seeing Beavis and Butt-head Do America and, believe me, it didn't disappoint.
What's the plot? Stupid question, but here goes anyway... Beavis and Butt-head wake up one morning to discover their TV's been stolen. They set out to find another TV to watch, first attempting to steal one from school, then walking into a hotel room, where some guy who talks like Bruce Willis offers them $10,000 to "do" his wife. They jump at the chance because not only would they get to score with a chick, but they could also buy themselves a big-screen TV with that kind of money.
Thus begins the adventure, as Beavis and Butt-head board a plane to Las Vegas, where they participate in a few hijinks and Beavis gets to become Cornholio for the fourth time. In Vegas, they find the wife, who talks like Demi Moore. In a RED ROCK WEST plot twist, she offers them $20,000 to go back where they came from and "do" him, a concept that doesn't appeal to the boys for some reason or another. As police close in on the hotel, Demi slips a top-secret chemical weapon into Beavis' pants, where a top-secret chemical weapon apparently already resides.
Once this happens, Beavis and Butt-head have all manner of federal agents (headed by a cavity-search obesessed Robert Stack) chasing them across the country. Over the course of Beavis and Butt-head Do America, we see how the two brain-dead cartoon characters react to the Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, the Capitol Building and even the Oval Office. They even meet two men who are very probably their fathers.
This movie probably isn't for anyone who doesn't already like the show. If you do like the show, though, this is the best episode yet. It gets the two main characters out of the same neighborhood and the same boring routine we've seen them engage in for four seasons on the TV show, but it still manages to work in the best recurring characters from the show. Beavis and Butt- head Do America does not suck.
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