The Movie:

It's always a gamble to reconnect with material that gave one joy during their teen years. Will it age well, or will it just remind one of the cringe-inducing awkwardness and unsophistication of youth? Beavis and Butthead was such a gamble for me.

At fourteen, I was the perfect age for appreciating the shenanigans of two supremely stupid early teen burnouts (Voiced by Mike Judge) entirely driven by their reptilian brain being fed non-stop by vapid pop-culture that only glorified materialism, a corporate sanitization of sex, and empty charisma.

On its surface, there was a form of rebellion against normality that came with the zen distillation of life into junk food, crude humor, and pop culture. And of course, the characters' annoyingly infectious laugh helped a bit. Upon revisiting Beavis and Butthead as an adult, and with the hindsight of creator Mike Judge's later deep dives into cynical and borderline nihilistic satire in the forms of Office Space and idiocracy, the whole enterprise comes across as an ideological trojan horse.

It's an angry diatribe denouncing the ever-plummetting intelligence of the American populace, wrapped around the marketable veneer that made the product ironically suitable for the one value in pop culture and media that created the cranially vapid environment that Judge was railing against in the first place: MTV.

When the excellent theatrical adventure experience of Beavis and Butthead Do America was in production, the MTV show had run its course, and Judge was ready to leave the duo that shot him to comedy superstardom behind and cleanse his psyche with a more optimistic view of America in the form of King of the Hill.

Since this was the big exit for these characters in Judge's mind, he created a world even more draped in nihilistic cynicism than the original show. Sure, in Do America, the titular duo is even more clueless and primitive as they were on the show, but every other form of authority and system that holds the country together is also not the answer. In the form of the federal agents who go after the duo because, through a series of hilarious misunderstandings, they carry a MacGuffin device that will destroy the world if it goes off, Judge admonishes the fascistic tendencies of the conservative ideals of authority.

The married couple (Voiced by Bruce Willis and Demi Moore) who send the duo on their journey are vain and selfish criminals. Even the wholesome Tom Anderson (Also voiced by Judge), the "veteran of two foreign wars" appears to be the victim of this crazy new world, but he also comes across as naive and backward, a long-forgotten remnant of American optimism. In Judge's America, everyone's in it for themselves, and no one is coming to save you. In 1996, this was pointed satire. In 2022, Judge's world is reality writ large.

The Blu-ray:

Video:

The new 1080p transfer is the best way to enjoy the hand-animated 2D glory of the film. Of course, it can't compete with the Disney output at the time, but for a PG-13 animated movie that depends on copious amounts of genital puns in order to make back its money, it's colorful and vibrant. This HD transfer, even though it retains some of the original film's minor scratches and blemishes, is the clearest way to see this movie.

Audio:

For such a metalhead duo like Beavis and Butthead, it's a bit surprising that the film's soundtrack was an eclectic mix of rock, metal, R&B, and rap. Perhaps the studio was trying to cater to a wider audience. In any case, the DTS-HD 5.1 track really comes alive as the impressive soundtrack busts out one of its songs. There's a surprising amount of surround presence for such a relatively low-budget film from the 1990s as well.

Extras:

Commentary: Judge and the animation director, Yvette Kaplan, dig into mostly a technical dissection of the film. Highly recommended for fans of adult animation.

The Big Picture: This 22-minute featurette on the making of the film actually manages to pack in quite a bit of information about all aspects of the production.

We're Gonna Score: A ten-minute exploration of the film's musical score.

The Smackdown: This is silly and unnecessary. An edit of all the many smacks and punches in the film.

MTV News Celebrity Shorts: These are bizarre. MTV got some celebrities to apparently improv about their "experiences" with Beavis and Butthead. In many cases, the characters they describe don't sound like them at all.

We also get Trailers and TV Spots.

Final Thoughts:

The movie looks much better than the show and has an epic action story that's condensed perfectly to an 80-minute runtime, with credits. The much bigger budget for the movie is displayed in every frame on screen. Without the satirical overtones, it's still possible to enjoy it as a dumb comedy/thriller with two idiots at the center of it. But it's Judge's grim view of the American future that turns Beavis and Butthead into a more contemplative, or depressing, depending on how you look at it, trope of comedy archetypes.

Oktay Ege Kozak is a film critic and screenwriter based in Portland, Oregon. He also writes for The Playlist, The Oregon Herald, and Beyazperde.com