While having a dream about being a giant who can destroy a city and almost score, Butt-Head is woken up by his friend Beavis.  Beavis points out that their TV has disappeared. Muddy footprints lead away from the television’s former location and out the front door.  Anyone who is familiar with MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head will immediately realize that this is a crisis.  Animated and voiced by Mike Judge, the moronic teenage duo of Beavis and Butt-Head really don’t have anything in their lives beyond television and heavy metal.  Beavis and Butt-Head set off to find their television, a quest that will see them traveling all the way from Highland, Texas to Las Vegas and eventually Washington D.C.  Along the way, they’ll be pursued by ATF Agent Fleming (Robert Stack), they’ll get hired by alcoholic Muddy Grimes (Bruce Willis) to kill his wife, Dallas (Demi Moore), and Dallas will set them up as the perfect patsies for a terrorist attack on Washington D.C.  Chelsea Clinton will beat up Butt-Head.  President Clinton will declares the boys to be heroes.  They’ll even meet their fathers, though everyone involved will be too dumb to realize it.  But will Beavis and Butt-Head ever find their TV?

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America was the first movie to star Beavis and Butt-Head and I can still remember when it first came out in 1996.  No one expected much from it but it turned out to be one of the funniest movies of the year, a triumph of animation, social satire, and jokes about wood.  A lot of the film’s humor comes from just how stupid Beavis and Butt-Head are but even more of the humor comes from everyone’s inability to understand just how stupid they are.  Agent Fleming may think he’s saving America but he’s actually just chasing two teenagers who don’t even know how to read their own names.  Muddy may think that he’s hired two experienced hitmen to “do” his wife but instead, he’s promised to pay two idiots to do his wife.  (With the money, “we could buy a TV,” Butt-Head tells Beavis.)  Everyone, from Fleming to Muddy Grimes, assumes that there must be some sort of grand scheme behind Beavis and Butt-Head’s journey across America.  There isn’t.  They just want to find a television.

Beavis and Butt-Head were and still are two wonderfully comedic creations.  Watching them, I’m always surprised to remember that Mike Judge provided both of their voices.  When they argue with each other about where their TV has gone or if it’s a good idea to jump out of a speeding car, Judge is arguing with himself.  Butt-Head may be the leader but the heart of the duo is definitely Beavis and maybe Cornholio.  The non-stop laughing, the inability to read, the obsessively crude humor, Beavis and Butt-Head were the future and they didn’t even realize it.  Voicing the boys and their neighbor Mr. Anderson, Mike Judge generates most of the laughs in the movie but he still gets first-class help from Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and especially Robert Stack.

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America was considered to be a surprise commercial and critical success but the only people who were really surprised were those who hadn’t previously experienced Mike Judge’s sense of humor and satirical viewpoint.  Beavis and Butt-Head Do America is smart comedy about some very dumb people.