Idiocy at its best: how film critics met the film "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe"

Paramount+ releases Beavis And Butt-head Do The Universe on June 23.

Popular characters-losers of the animated series launched in the 1990s returned to the screen.

This time, two comrades of interest and IQ are sent into space on a shuttle to meet new adventures.

The director and screenwriter of the project was Mike Judge, who worked on the TV series Silicon Valley and the animated project Tales from the Tour.

Judge also voiced both of the main characters in the tape. 

The action takes place in 1998, a year after the events of the original series finale.

An experiment at a Highland High School Science Fair ends in fire and mass hysteria, and it's all Beavis and Butt-Head's fault.

The boys are brought before a juvenile judge, who sends them to a NASA space camp, where the buddies become members of the same mission.

However, something goes wrong during a space trip and the teenagers are sucked into a black hole and end up on Earth in 2022, where they are pursued by alternate universe versions of Beavis and Butt-Head.

Many foreign film critics have already managed to evaluate the picture.

Most concluded that Judge is following tradition: the characters still laugh at every ambiguous word like "hole", do reckless things like the "science experiment" with blows to the genitals at the school fair, and to still suffer from a lack of sexual life.

The Hollywood Reporter writer Daniel Finberg noted in his review that although the viewer on the screen still sees the same stupid friends and plain, flat humor, which at one time became the “chip” of the animated series, nevertheless, “Beavis and Butt-Head are doing Universe ”is different from the usual canon - the tape has a clear plot with justified lines.

“Like 1996's Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe feels like a normal feature-length movie, not a sprawling 22-minute TV episode.

The plot, in which Beavis and Butt-Head's desire to "get laid" leads them to travel through space, time and Texas, is well twisted and contains quite justified plot twists, including (leading to. -

) university and prison, ”writes Finberg.

He emphasized that “despite the lack of any significant progress in the quality of animation, there are some really difficult scenes in the film, such as the long car chase at the end.

There are also a lot of wonderfully silly musical cuts that also help to develop the plot.

“Like the previous film, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe was not created to comment on video clips or MTV programs,” the expert summed up.

He also noted that "low-brow jokes" do not make a film of poor quality.

In addition to adventure and pseudoscience, the script is filled with "quite sincere moments related to the friendship of Beavis and Butt-Head", as well as Beavis's love line.

The author believes that the creators managed to keep the characters afloat without turning them from "funny and pitiful" to "sad and miserable".

• Shot from the movie "Beavis and Butt-Head Make the Universe"

• © Paramount Pictures

According to The Variety journalist Owen Gleiberman, the world did not need a second feature film about "concerned metalheads", but such a sarcastic, funny and sometimes sweet film simply cannot be ignored.

Gleiberman noted that "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe" can be called "sci-fi burlesque" with time travel and the multiverse, but at the same time both characters appear in the same form, both physically - dressed in the same T-shirts, and mentally — they are still unable to notice anything around.

When they first see a mobile phone, they think it's a mini-TV, and when they find out that they can pay for the purchase, they immediately head to the store.

At the same time, they are not worried about new technologies, but about the fact that you can buy a lot of nachos.

“Good cartoon characters don't tend to get old, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe is filmed inventively enough not to seem anachronistic.

Comic duo creator and perpetual obscenity singer Mike Judge brings his characters to the present day in the blink of an eye, without losing a bit of style.

This is not voiced out loud, but (in fact. -

) he makes them the object of ridicule of this comic fantasy for the era (popularity. -

) of superheroes, ”writes Gleiberman.

Despite this, according to the critic, “in the old days, it sometimes seemed that Beavis and Butt-Head were (ours. -

) the future, what a youth culture completely divorced from reality might look like.

At the time, this spectacle aroused mock fears about "how low they could fall."

Now this couple is just one of many testimonies of our rapid fall to the bottom.

Alice Wax of Collider also stated that in the new film, the viewer sees the same Beavis and Butt-Head.

And this, in her opinion, is good news.

Like Glayburn, Wax notes that the movie is chock-full of the "toilet" humor of the original animated series, and that the teens in the film don't care about anything other than nachos and "goal counting."

But still, there are some changes: friends who are losers now do not have much time to watch TV and laugh at music videos.

Wax also emphasizes that alternative versions of the characters appear in the film - smart Beavis and Butt-Head, against which it is even more clearly seen that the teenagers have remained the same. 

• Shot from the movie "Beavis and Butt-Head Make the Universe"

• © Paramount Pictures

The film critic declares with confidence that the generation familiar with these characters will definitely like the tape.

“I don't know if 'Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe' will appeal to Generation Z or younger Millennials.

I don't know how these jokes will be received by other generations or even by people of the right age who never liked Beavis and Butt-Head.

This is a movie made by Generation X for Generation X. If you've been a fan of Beavis and Butt-Head, you'll love how they do the universe.

The world around them has changed, but they remain the same.

And it is, in the best sense of these words, delightfully charming, ludicrous and completely predictable (spectacle. -

),” Wax assures.

Critic A.A.

Dowd, in an article for The Guardian, noted that the relevance of the new project by Mike Judge still loses to the previous tapes: “What a relief that Judge is not trying to joke about the burning topic of the modern political landscape, which in recent years has become not so easy to ridicule.

Still, his social comments are usually much more scathing.”

However, Dowd thinks that "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe" is something more creative than a sci-fi parody.

Like others, he is glad that time has not affected the character of the main characters: they are still stupid satirical heroes who cannot be taught or educated.

"Fortunately, the long absence hasn't affected the comedic value of their quirky-dumb personalities, and fans are likely to chuckle along with the main characters when watching the new film," the critic notes.

• Shot from the movie "Beavis and Butt-Head Make the Universe"

• © Paramount Pictures

Beavis and Butt-Head is an American animated comedy television series that aired from 1993 to 1997.

In 2011, it was renewed for another eighth season.

The history of the project began with the fact that Mike Judge, a graduate of the University of California at San Diego with a bachelor's degree in physics, attended an animation festival in Dallas in the early 1990s.

Then he realized that the love of animation is not a short-term hobby - at school he always drew his teachers, but he planned to immerse himself in this area professionally when he gets rich or retires.

Judge sold his first short cartoon "Office Space" for $2,000. This prompted him to continue doing animation - the future cinematographer realized that he could make money on cartoons.

He directed the short films "Baseball with a Frog" and "Peace, Love and Understanding", the main characters of which were two young blockheads - Beavis and Butt-Head.

The pilot versions were released in September 1992 and attracted the interest of MTV producers, who signed a contract with Judge for 65 episodes.

In the series, Beavis and Butt-Head do stupid things, as well as torturing animals, such as playing baseball with a frog.

According to Judge himself, they do this because they are very stupid and do not even suspect what they are doing.

Their actions can be infuriating, but, as the author says in an early interview for Wild Cartoon Kingdom magazine, they are not inherently evil or classic bullies.

They do not intentionally harm anyone - they want to be cool, but it turns out the other way around.

The series captivated not only teenagers, but also an adult audience, becoming a cultural phenomenon.

The unconditional success of the project was ensured by unpretentious humor and familiarization of the audience with a variety of rock music.

Fans began to wear T-shirts with the image of heroes and imitate the manner of speaking characteristic of Beavis and Butt-Head.

The heroes even released a music album, The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience, in 1993.

The collection includes covers of songs by Cher (with the participation of the singer herself), Aerosmith, Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

In 1996, a full-length cartoon was released - "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America."

Themed games and books have also been released within the universe.

Interestingly, the names of Beavis and Butt-Head are inspired by real people.

Judge admitted that during his college years, the boy Bobby Beavis lived next door to him, who has nothing to do with the cartoon character, and mischievous people with unusual nicknames - Iron Butt and Butt-Head.

Judge just liked the sound of their names.

In Russian, the series "Beavis and Butt-Head" was voiced by Sergei Chonishvili, through whose lips the characters received the nicknames "Cormorant" and "Pelmen".