The cultural values of America's youth take on new faces and personalities with every passing generation. Back in our day, grunge rock and gangsta rap helped create the ideal that non-conformity was the mold to which we should conform.
Master satirist Mike Judge recognized this and sold his mockery to the very "butts" of his jokes, us.
His product, Beavis and Butt-head Do America, blows up the trials of sexual repressed adolescents in suburbia, USA.
Beavis serves as the duo's id, clearly stating his insistent needs and problems: "I need TP for my bunghole," "Dammit, I need to score," and the trivial, "We need a TV now, we're missing everything!" The slightly less hormone-driven Butt-head is the leader of the two -- always tempting Beavis with a new dare endorsed by primitive logic. Upon his sweet-talking, Beavis was convinced that scoring and TV retrieval were imminent.
With a heaping tablespoon of irony, Judge feeds us a tale of Beavis and Butt-head trekking the country chasing their two dreams: scoring with a hot chick and getting their boob tube back. Along their journey, they accomplish the dreams of housebroken empty nesters who look down on their love for fire and rock n' roll. Now separated from their idiot box after a break-in of their living room, Beavis and Butt-head involuntarily become entwined with a divorced ma and pa smuggling ring.
The two agree to "do" the gorgeous Dallas, the ex-wife of alcoholic criminal, Muddy. Funny that the latter two are played by another recently divorced couple, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. In his mad sex craze, Beavis ends up carrying a highly contaminating "flawed unit" in his pants. Meanwhile, FBI agent Fleming (Robert Stack) goes to all ends to retrieve it via deep and hard body cavity searches for purposes of national security.
In their quest for their TV, Beavis and Butt-head involuntarily visit places too beautiful to be contained by television. Oblivious to the history and culture surrounding them, they spend more time being fascinated with pooping donkeys, automatic urinals and petrified wood.
Looking back on the peak of Beavis and Butt-head's popularity, these two were also involuntarily role models for our generation's TV heads. Remember that guy in high school who started to laugh like Butt-head -- uh... huh huh? That wasn't too long ago. Remember the people who vigorously and religiously watched MTV waiting for the next new thing? Oh wait, that's now.
Although this movie is mainly geared to the MTV generation, many lessons can be taken from the stupidity of two male adolescents. On the surface, Beavis and Butt-head seem to endorse stealing, starting fires and tirelessly lounging on the couch. But Judge keenly exaggerates their habits, making a farce of them. In his other work, Office Space and King of the Hill, Judge pokes fun at the common annoyances and difficulties of contemporary middle-class life: parental uncertainties, mediocre occupations and in Beavis and Butt-head's case, pubescent identity finding.
