Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe Review

It's not too often I'm at a loss for words while watching a movie, but Paramount+'s "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe" left me sitting in disbelief throughout it's entire runtime. It's only eighty six minutes but it felt like an eternity, where either A) it wasn't at all funny or B) I didn't get it. I think it's a mix of both.

Writer and creator Mike Judge voices both titular leads, two dimwitted teenagers who, through a long-winded series of events that start with Butt-Head kicking Beavis in the groin and ends with time-travel, alternate dimensions and government agents out to get them. Is there a plot? Does it matter? I'm not sure, but I would answer "no" to both questions.

But the narrative we must discuss, against my better judgement. Starting in 1998, after the duo destroys a school science fair by, yes, pain inflicted to the privates, a judge takes pity on them, sentences them to space camp, and through more miscommunications they end up aboard an actual space shuttle. Why? Because of their natural skills at the center's "docking simulator," which of course is just a sexual joke to them. Things get more complicated when they believe captain Serena (Andrea Savage) wants to "do it" with them, in space. I'm not saying my sense of humor is at all sophisticated, but gosh these two are just dumb.

I guess that's not entire fair- yes Beavis and Butt-Head are dumb, but so is everyone around them.

While above the Earth, things of course go awry thanks to a telescope and the sun, and the team is left with limited oxygen. And boy, is Serena is not having it. She ejects them from the ship, only for them to enter a blackhole, end up in 2022, and well, that's the acid-trip of the plot.

I've got nothing against dumb jokes, but the satire is either vague or right on the nose. Later in the movie, the protagonists end up in a gender studies class where they learn about "white privilege." How do they respond? They lose any care in the world, stealing and destroying property all because that's their understanding of the discrimination. Yeah OK, that's clever, I guess, but so what? The two never seem to grow in any sensible way, and so the attempts at social irony just land with a hard thud. There is no sense of satisfaction with watching any of the actions or events onscreen, which is if that's the point, it paints a grim prediction of American culture. As an American, I don't need idiots to tell me how dumb our culture already is; being a resident is enough.

What am I to do here? I didn't laugh, and I didn't like what I saw, but that doesn't make it a "bad" movie. I suppose fans of the original show, which debuted on MTV in the 90's, will find a lot to like here. They'll probably get a kick out of seeing an old favorite in today's world, with today's sensitivities, but I gave them an hour and a half of my life, and like Beavis and Butt-Head, I didn't learn anything.