Beavis & Butt-Head Do the Universe review: An enjoyably stupid multiverse

Enlarge / Beavis and Butt-head, seen here potentially succumbing to space madness. (credit: Paramount)

The Mike Judge-verse has long toyed with the inherent comedy of utter stupidity. But as anyone who has looked beyond the incessant "heh heh heh" of Beavis and Butt-Head knows, Judge's cartoons, TV series, and films are at their best when they toy with the question of exactly who in the room is the "smart" or "dumb" one.

The great news about this week's Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, a straight-to-Paramount+ film debuting on Thursday, June 23, is that it finally sees Judge and co. bring a smart-kind-of-stupid approach to his most famous cartoon. This week's film achieves this far more successfully than the series' other feature-length film from 1996. Its ideas meld well with the series' bottom-of-the-toilet stupidity and feel fresh instead of like they were ripped from other Judge series.

Failing forward, all the way to space

This many years later, these dudes still love AC/DC and Metallica T-shirts. Also, nachos. Lots of nachos. (credit: Paramount)

The film opens with madcap comedy in its sights, as Beavis and Butt-head are in high school in the '90s, still oblivious to anything that doesn't resemble boobs, explosions, sticky snack foods, or phrases that sound like euphemisms. (Heh, heh. "Sticky.")

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