The new animated feature, Beavis and Butt-head Do America is the perfect waste of time. The kind of spent time that won't keep you up in the middle of the night berating yourself for going--let alone spending the money. And I encourage you to bring a date, or even better all your friends.

Beavis (right) and Butt-head groove to the sounds of a Las Vegas hotel lounge act in Beavis and Butt-head Do America© 1996 MTV Networks.

The film provokes and challenges the viewer in many ways. One of which is the uneasy realization that Beavis and Butt-head are like family. The kind of family that you're embarrassed to say you're related to. And they make you laugh. Suspiciously, I do not think we're laughing at them. Beavis and Butt-head Do America has a keen and sharp eye for capturing the subtitles of behavior. Watching the film is like watching a freak show caricature of everyday people. If the film were shot in live action, this kind of documentation would go unnoticed. I'm rather curious about the kind of ability that could take a couple of hand drawn designs of deep simplicity and drape it over public consciousness like grandma's wool blanket. There is something deeper at work and history holds many examples of the war against traditional values and thought.

Much credit should go to Abby Terkhule, the film's producer, and champion of the talents of Mike Judge during the early days before the series. Judge's work appeared on Liquid Television after catching the eye of Colossal Pictures' Prudence Fenton. A very interesting period of time for TV animation, Nickelodeon launched Ren & Stimpy and MTV introduced the world to Beavis & Butt-head. The screenplay was written by Mike Judge and Joe Stillman, both experiencing their work being produced for the first time on the big screen.

The boys are wanted in Beavis and Butt-head Do America © 1996 MTV Networks.

Starting and Ending With Television
The plot of Beavis and Butt-head Do America starts and ends with television. The boy's TV set is stolen while they daydream and is not recovered until the end of the picture, beat up and cast aside in an alley, like the best and the worst of medium. B&B devise ways to replace their television, which leads them to cross paths with an aggressive drunk in a hotel room. The man offers the boys a lot of money to "do my wife." B&B hop on a plane and head to Las Vegas where she is holed up from the law and in possession of a deadly biological device called the "X-5 Unit." The unit is sewn into Beavis' shorts ( don't ask why he removed them ) and the boys return East across America with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms people in hot pursuit. The action concludes at the White House, in our nation's capitol, where President Clinton hands out memberships to the ATF. ( Is this the first time our President has been portrayed in an animated film?) The story is not worth the big screen. B&B role play through the picture. It is unfortunate that they could not break away or even attempt to explore a different aspect of their personalities. Emotionally, they are wind up dolls with a predesigned set of instructions. This is the only obstacle that keeps B&B flat TV personalities in a medium that pleads for light and dimensionality.