The ’90s Icon Space Comedy On Streaming That Will Break Your Funny Bone
Beavis and Butt-Head were iconic characters throughout the 1990s for their hilarious takes on modern music, unrivaled stupidity, and lampooning of pop culture across the social and political sphere. Series creator and star Mike Judge has long expressed a desire to return to the incredible characters, finally marking their first appearance in decades with 2022’s Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe. The film, which serves as a direct sequel to 1996’s Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, is available to stream now on Paramount+.
Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe brought the iconic duo to the modern era, and one year later, is still a hit on Paramount+.
The adult animated comedy follows the titular characters of Beavis and Butt-Head, a pair of aggressively simple and wildly annoying teenage boys who spend most of their time eating junk food, watching television, and declaring which things suck and which things are pretty cool. First premiering as an MTV animated series back in 1993, the show launched Mike Judge’s career in television and film.
Since the success of the Beavis and Butt-Head series, Judge has gone on to craft some of the finest comedy classics of the past few decades, including movies such as Office Space, Idiocracy, and Extract, and television series such as King of the Hill and Silicon Valley. As a frequent collaborator with former Simpsons writer and US Office showrunner Greg Daniels, Judge has cemented himself as one of the godfathers of modern television comedy.
In Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe, the pair pick up where they left off in 1998, behaving poorly and watching pulp television. After accidentally burning down a science fair being held at their local high school, the teens are forced into a space camp for at-risk youths. Despite their staggering ineptitude, Beavis and Butt-Head rapidly rise through the ranks at space camp and are eventually selected to board a space shuttle and study black holes.
Much to the surprise of nobody, the pair create an enormous catastrophe while in space, resulting in the shuttle getting sucked through the very black hole they were meant to study. 24 years later, Beavis and Butt-Head miraculously emerge from the aether of space to a new and unfamiliar world that has left them behind.
After experiencing some of the highs and lows of what the year 2022 has to offer, the boys eventually find themselves on the radar of the United States government and the forces of the CIA. Before long, their cosmic journey begins ripping holes in the space-time continuum, bringing intelligent versions of Beavis and Butt-Head from another universe into the mix, in a hilarious satire of modern multiverse trends.
Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe was first announced in early 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, causing most of the production to be done over collaborative Zoom conferences between writers, animators, and voice actors with home studios.
A stolen cop car, a prison riot, and a few multiverse portals later, the boys find themselves in an adventure that makes for one of the funniest films of 2022. Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe was first announced in early 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, causing most of the production to be done over collaborative Zoom conferences between writers, animators, and voice actors with home studios.
In addition to Mike Judge, who voices Beavis and Butt-Head, the film has a cast consisting of Gary Cole, Nat Faxon, Chi McBride, Andrea Savage, Brian Huskey, and Futurama‘s Phil LaMarr. Judge’s Silicon Valley alumnus Chris Diamantopoulos, Martin Starr, and Jimmy O. Yang also join for small voice cameos in the film.
Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe opened to fantastic reviews, garnering a 97 percent certified fresh critic score from the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, with an 84 percent score from general audiences. After the film’s massive success on streaming, it was announced that Paramount+ would order a DVD release of the film and a revival of the original MTV series.
The DVD release was recently canceled for unknown reasons, though the series has received two new seasons since Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe premiered.
If you’re a fan of the original series, which dominated popular culture in the 1990s, or the 1996 film in which the titular ne’er-do-wells do America, be sure to catch Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe now on Paramount+.
The DVD release was recently canceled for unknown reasons, though the series has received two new seasons since Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe premiered.
Critics and audiences adore the revival, which seems to have seamlessly transitioned into its legacy sequels in a move highly uncharacteristic of other popular franchises from the time. With Mike Judge behind the wheel, it seems like the Beavis and Butt-Head franchise is at an all-time high in terms of quality.
