Unicorn rainbow farts and the return of Cornholio?
Space sucks, but Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe" rules.
Like "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America," the new film starts out very strong with an
awesome action-packed intro. While their first film opened up to a pastiche of kaiju
films — featuring a giant Beavis and Butt-Head stomping through a city and spewing fire from
their mouths — "Do the Universe" opens up with a cool "Star Wars"-inspired space chase.
Beavis and Butt-Head are briefly rendered in full CGI,
piloting a small space craft in what looks like a replica of the Death Star trench, being chased
by enemy ships shooting green lasers at them. It's a great, well-directed action sequence,
plopping Beavis and Butt-Head into a scene from a high-stakes space opera to say things like,
"Space sucks.
That was cool."
Then, they blow up right before the opening title, because they were looking at all the
cool explosions instead of what was right in front of them. Seems fitting.
While it is obviously improbable that two dumb teens — especially ones as
comically dumb as Beavis and Butt-Head — would ever,
ever get a chance to board a NASA rocket ship, writers Mike Judge and Lew Morton came up with
a relatively clever reason as to how that would be possible in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"
After Beavis and Butt-Head create a science fair mishap that leads to their school burning down,
the two are given a court order to attend a NASA space camp, which was slated to be the
prize for the fair's winner. This is because the fire Beavis and Butt-Head created has destroyed
the records of the real winner, and the judge assigned to their case recently watched an
episode of "Touched by an Angel," inspiring him to give the at-risk boys a second chance.
Once at the camp, Beavis and Butt-Head are obviously bored by all the science
stuff ... except for a docking machine that mimics sexual intercourse. So they spend all
day and all night practicing the "docking maneuver," to the point that they become
experts. The NASA astronauts, unfortunately, mistake their enthusiasm for the machine as
them being technological prodigies, rather than horny boys who just see sex everywhere.
The person who is initially the most gung-ho about Beavis and Butt-Head joining the space mission,
due to their surprising aptitude for the docking machine, is Captain Serena
Ryan. This assertive astronaut keeps misunderstanding Beavis and Butt-Head's
clear and unhealthy sexual attraction to her as enthusiasm for the space mission. This
is exemplified in one of their first meetings, where she tells the boys,
"I want you to do that for real in space with me."
She means operating the docking controls in actual space,
rather than what they obviously think she means.
However, one of the funniest exchanges happens when they're all fully-dressed
in their space suits, marching towards the launching rocket. This whole time
Beavis and Butt-Head have assumed they've been training to sleep with Ryan.
"Do you know how few people have done what you're about to do?"
Obviously, she means going to space, but the misunderstanding only gets worse from there.
"only 256 men and 49 women."
"That's a little more than I was hoping but you know that's ok."
She then goes on to add,
"And that's not even counting the Russian dog and the monkey."
"Enough."
"Beavis and Butt-Head," as a series and a concept, always thrived on contrast. While it may seem to
many viewers that the superficial appeal of "Beavis and Butt-Head" is their gross-out
humor and slapstick shenanigans, the truth is that only works when they're in opposition to
something more intellectual. So their stupidity is usually best served – like a lot of the
best buffoonish comedy – when going against a straight man (or in this case, a straight woman).
This worked great in the show, such as when their idealistic hippie homeroom teacher Mr.
Van Driessen tried to get through to the boys using art or other outlets,
and it was always hilarious seeing his efforts getting completely dashed by
overestimating Beavis and Butt-Head's abilities and underestimating their lack of self-awareness.
The same goes for Captain Serena Ryan, who, while in the NASA shuttle, takes Beavis and Butt-Head
to the ship's cockpit to show them the sun rising over the Earth from space. Her speech, wonderfully
delivered by actress Andrea Savage, is backed by a rousing and inspirational musical score.
All of this makes Butt-Head's quick declaration once she leaves all the more hilarious.
"The Earth sucks"
One of the ongoing jokes among fans of "Beavis and Butt-Head" is how visually distinct they
are – even when compared to the other characters on the show. Everyone else in their universe seems
to have roughly the same proportions as a real human being. Beavis and Butt-Head, by contrast,
have long, bulbous heads, completely out of proportion to their tiny, caricatured bodies,
as well as exaggerated facial features that border on the grotesque.
In "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe," when the wormhole in 1998 spits them out on a beach
in 2022, the space-time anomaly of course attracts the U.S. government to investigate.
When government agent Mattison looks at a sketch drawing of Beavis and Butt-Head,
he immediately says, in a grim tone,
"Whatever they are, they're definitely not human."
In fact, Mattison believing Beavis and Butt-Head are actually part of an
advanced alien species is a running joke throughout the film. This includes a scene
later on, when he hears the pair on an intercepted cell phone call, and states,
"It's crude, but they're learning to approximate our speech."
It's the metatextual acknowledgment of Beavis and Butt-Head's outrageous designs,
on top of Cole's committed delivery, that sells the humor.
One of the more outlandish sci-fi concepts in "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe" are the
inter-dimensional beings known as "Smart Beavis" and "Smart Butt-Head." The Smart Beavis and
Butt-Head variants are styled after Marvel's Uatu the Watcher, with pale skin, bald heads showcasing
somehow even bigger foreheads, pupil-less white eyes, and flowing ornate sci-fi robes.
Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-Head have traveled to meet up with Beavis and Butt-Head Prime to warn
them that they need to enter a portal to return back to their own timeline, or the multiverse
will collapse on itself. As the Prime idiots we know look on confused, Smart Beavis asks,
"Um, did you see the cartoon Spider-Man movie, per chance?"
"No."
"That would've made explaining it a lot easier."
With seemingly all the knowledge in the universe
at their disposal, Butt-head asks the most important question he can think of.
"Did any of the other versions ever score?"
"No. No version of Beavis and Butt-Head has ever scored."
However, instead of being dismayed, Beavis and Butt-Head Prime take that
as a challenge to be the first ones. All the while, rather than their trademark chuckling,
Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-Head react with comments like,
"That is amusing yes quite jocular. Yes mirthful yes."
The Smart Beavis and Butt-Head variants are a running gag throughout the film,
with the most clever joke being the reveal that they are still
really dumb, since their plan was needlessly complicated.
They are indeed the smartest Beavis and Butt-Heads in the multiverse – that just isn't saying much.
The time travel concept is used relatively sparingly throughout "Beavis and Butt-Head
Do the Universe," despite it being the catalyst for the whole plot. Not to say there aren't funny
fish-out-of-water scenes in which they confront how things have changed over the years. These
include jokes like discovering what a cellphone is for the first time, as well as realizing how their
childhood home has changed. But by and large, that's not the main comedic thrust of the story.
However, one bit that really takes advantage of how society has shifted in the last couple decades
is the scene at a gender studies class that Beavis and Butt-Head accidentally crash.
In it, the feminist professor asks them to confront their white privilege.
Now, to be clear, white privilege is a very real phenomenon, with devastating systemic
ramifications. As for Beavis and Butthead, well, let's just say they don't really get it.
In one moment, a white student talks over a Black student to explain the concept, hilariously shows
the well-intentioned lack of self-awareness that can exist even within liberal spaces.
While the film pokes fun at the earnestness of some of the students' often oversimplified view
of white privilege, it also shows a pretty concrete example of its existence as well.
One of the most iconic bits in the "Beavis and Butt-Head" canon is when
Beavis transforms into The Great Cornholio, his manic alter-ego. In the new film, after
Beavis and Butt-Head steal a cop car because they misunderstand the degree to which the
aforementioned white privilege would protect them from police. Naturally, they are sent to prison.
When a police inspection comes up, a prisoner forces Beavis to hide his drugs, and Beavis
takes that as an invitation to eat them. This, of course, marks the return of The Great Cornholio.
What puts this scene above many of his previous appearances are the raised stakes,
and the fact that not only does Cornholio incite a prison riot,
he also forces the warden to partake in prison reform. While the film isn't purely on the side
of all criminals, nor prison abolition, it does seem to be on the side of humane treatment.
It also subversively displays white privilege, considering the
warden decides to show Beavis mercy, which probably wouldn't otherwise be the case.
The main plot of "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe" is
Beavis and Butt-Head's ongoing quest to find Captain Serena Ryan, now a governor,
and have sex with her. Before they both go to finally confront her, Beavis and
Butt-Head each have their own fantasies about what it would be like to "score."
It's funny to see how hormonal he and Butt-Head are throughout the film, but when the audience
actually sees inside his head they realize that Beavis just wants a sweet girlfriend
to cuddle with… and also torture some ants. It gets even funnier when he imagines her as an
avenging warrior princess in metal bikini armor, bloodily slicing up his bullies and taking him
on a ride atop her rainbow-farting Pegasus steed ... which also happens to have Butt-Head's face.
Butt-Head's fantasy — in which he's a pimped-out lothario wearing a tacky fur coat and gold
dollar-sign jewelry, surrounded by beautiful women – is less original and comedic than Beavis',
but it does have a hilarious moment where one of the swooning women says,
"I heard you put your thingy in a girl's thingy."
As mentioned before, one of the main conceits of "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"
is that no Beavis and no Butt-Head in the entire multiverse has ever had sex. Which,
given what we know about Beavis and Butt-Head, isn't much of a surprise.
However, that all changes at the end of the film. Beavis feels he has legitimately fallen in love
with Serena, though he's actually fallen in love with Siri, due to being unaware of how
smartphones work. He's about to confess his true love to her, when Smart Beavis swoops in
and offers Serena a chance to travel the cosmos as she's always dreamed. She agrees.
It's later revealed that Smart Beavis and Serena did indeed have sex,
after a ceremony is held by an Empress Beavis and Emperor Butt-Head, who award Smart Beavis
an "I Scored" medal . Meanwhile, Smart Butt-Head is awarded an "I Watched" medal,
since he was "hiding in a suitcase at the foot of the bed" to watch the two do it.
But the best part is the reveal of the vast number of alternate Beavises and
Butt-Heads witnessing the ceremony seated in a futuristic space coliseum. It's a
sight to behold, and is an all-around epic and hilarious way to end the film.