Anyone seeking a window into the absurdities and stupidities of late-20th-century life could do far worse than the original televised misadventures of Beavis and Butt-Head. Of course, Mike Judge’s animated sensation, which disguised its high satire as the lowest of lowbrow comedy, was something of a mirror, too. Who were its eternally apathetic, horny and destructive adolescent heroes but boardwalk caricatures of the teens watching from home? With Beavis and Butt-Head, MTV lampooned its own audience – a whole generation of fellow tittering coach potatoes – alongside the countless other American stereotypes that passed into the pair’s orbit over seven seasons.
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe isn’t much of a window or a mirror. The hook of this new feature-length vehicle is that it plucks television’s densest duo out of their natural 90s habitat and deposits them straight into the modern world. America hasn’t gotten any less spoofable in the 30 years since Beavis and Butt-Head made their ignoble small-screen debut; there’s no shortage of contemporary targets for Judge to lock in his comedic crosshairs. So why does the film feel like a missed opportunity in the satire department, even as its eponymous slacker idiots score plenty of familiar laughs?
