Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe

Our Review

What Happens

1998: after burning down the Highland science fair, the duo dodge juvy via a creative-sentencing judge and land at Space Camp, where they are freakishly good at the docking simulator (they think it is something else, huh huh). NASA rides them as a PR stunt aboard the shuttle Endeavour, they wreck the mission investigating a micro black hole, are left for dead in space, and fall through it.

They re-emerge 24 years later, in 2022, unaged and unbothered. The world now has iPhones, which they believe contain a woman named Serena (it is Siri), and a smart parallel-universe version of themselves who is trying to fix the multiverse, plus the NSA and the Governor of Texas on their tails. Daria shows up, silently, decades older and no happier.

Our take: the time-travel frame is secretly the smartest structure the franchise ever had, because it makes the joke about the audience: we explain the internet to Beavis and Butt-Head, which is what we have been doing to them since 1993. Best single element: Siri as the love interest, the saddest and funniest gag Mike Judge has written about how people actually use phones. The catch: 2022 America is a thinner target than 1996 America was, and the third act multiverse mechanics cost it momentum.

Verdict: 6.5/10. A real movie, not a victory lap: funnier than it has any right to be, shorter than its premise wants. Watch it if Do America made you nostalgic and you want the duo dropped into the world they predicted.

Where to watch

Streaming on Paramount+ (premiered June 23, 2022), where it sits alongside the full remastered series library.