The future is now in “Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe,” the animated comedy directed by John Rice and Albert Calleros, and streamed on Paramount+. The year is 1998, and through an incendiary series of circumstances, the endlessly chuckling animated MTV miscreants originally created (and still voiced) by Mike Judge are brought in to help set up a NASA space station docking mission. In their own minds, their story is one of “two heroes on a quest to score.”
The mission fails spectacularly, and Beavis and Butt-Head are sucked into a black hole (you can imagine their reaction to this prospect) and then dropped in Texas around 2022. The once idealistic astronaut Serena Ryan (Andrea Savage), whom the dudes had hoped to hook up with, is now a cynical politician who wishes their deaths. An intelligent alternate-universe version of the pair tries to send the idiots to a portal to prevent cosmic destruction.
The scene of Beavis and Butt-Head getting to grips with today’s technology is funnier than bits in other movies where seniors try to do the same. Always the more sensitive member (heh-heh, I said “member”) of the two, Beavis gets further in touch with his feelings when he mistakes the virtual assistant Siri for Serena.
“A satirical remark about time”, observes Smart Beavis with a sharp statement by Smart Butt-Head. After nearly three decades concocting both edgy and profane pop culture satire, Judge probably understands that the real usefulness of such work is practically nil. Perhaps that’s why, despite a snappy academic scene that adapts, this film is less expansive in its sociological scope than the 1996 film “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.”
“Do the Universe” knows it won’t change the world or the area beyond. But the abundance of not-quite-cheap laughs that this film—best viewed with a plate of nachos—provides is therapeutic.
Beavis and Butt-Head do the universe
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Look at Paramount+.