BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA (PG)
Director: Mike Judge
Voices of: Mike Judge, Robert Stack,
Cloris Leachman, Richard Linklater, Eric Bogosian
Running Time: 89 minutes.
Primarily being the adventures of two hormonally challenged nerdy adolescent couch potatoes whose chief pursuits are
watching music videos and trying to score with chicks. Like the recent Joe's Apartment, the characters of Beavis and Butthead
were originally developed as a short cartoon for MTV in 1992. But the pair quickly grew in status and popularity to the point
where they are now the unofficial cultural ambassadors of the MTV generation, passing judgement on everything that's cool
and everything that totally sucks. The surprising success of Beavis and Butthead led to the development of this full length
animated feature from creator and director Mike Judge and co-writer Joe Stillman, and its enormous success at the US
box office certainly justifies MTV's faith in the characters.
Beavis And Butthead Do America is as far removed from your average Disney-style animated feature as you can possibly get.
This dynamically dense duo easily manage to find crude innuendo in nearly everything, twisting innocent words into sexual
references, and, accordingly, much of the deliberately low-brow humour here is juvenile, ribald and scatological in nature. For
anyone on their wavelength, though, this is hilarious stuff!
The film begins when Beavis and Butthead are forced out of their comfortable and limited domestic environment after their
precious tv set is stolen. This dumb and dumber duo leave the comfort of their lounge room to find a replacement, which is
how they come to be mixed up with Muddy, a desperate criminal who mistakes them for a pair of hired assassins, and his
ex-wife Dallas (voiced by an uncredited Demi Moore), a female terrorist who plans to blow up the White House with a
stolen chemical bomb. Following a misunderstanding, the dense duo embark on a cross country (I wonder what our two
heroes would make of this?) odyssey that takes them to Las Vegas and eventually to Washington DC, where they accidentally
save the White HHhHHouse from destruction. Accompanied by a busload of senior citizens, the pair travel across America via
some well-known landmarks that are on the receiving end of some typical Beavis and Butthead treatment. Their innate
stupidity and clumsiness sees the pair mistaken for a pair of dangerous international terrorists, and they are relentlessly pursued
by a dedicated FBI agent with an unhealthy fondness for deep full cavity body searches (voiced by veteran tough guy Robert
Stack, who seems to be revelling in the opportunity to send up his own screen image).
Writer/director Judge does double duty here as he also provides the voices and guttural signature laugh of our two heroes.
Richard Linklater, director of the original slacker movie Dazed And Confused, Eric Bogosian and Cloris Leachman also
provide some of the other voices.
The film's iconoclastic intent and irreverent approach is apparent from the opening credit sequence that sends up some of the
more popular tv crime shows from the '70's, accompanied by an energetic reworking of Isaac Hayes' famous Shaft theme.
The boys' hilarious cross country adventures are accompanied by a pumping soundtrack featuring bands such as AC/DC and
Red Hot Chili Peppers. Beavis And Butthead Do America offers fans of these popular awkward animated adolescents a
healthy and hilarious cinematic dose of juvenile, iconoclastic humour, wrapped up in a totally cool and enormously entertaining
package.