Director: Mike Judge
Writers: Mike Judge and Joe Stillman
Cast:
Beavis, Butt-Head, Tom Anderson, Mr. Van Driessen (aka the Hippie Teacher), Principal McVicker: Mike Judge
Muddy Grimes: Bruce Willis
Dallas Grimes: Demi Moore
Old Lady from the Plane: Cloris Leachman
Agent Fleming, ATF: Robert Stack
Agent Bork, ATF: Greg Kinnear
President Bill Clinton: Dale Reeves
Write-Up:
Introduction
Yeah, after doing a lot of wholesome posts, this is not so wholesome...
Right before MTV went to hell with crappy reality TV shows, it was the home of one of the most inappropriate and offensive cartoon series to ever exist.
South Park came along a few years later in 1997 and took the theme of adult cartoons to a new level of depravity... and it's still on the air to this day.
For anyone who doesn't know, Beavis and Butt-Head are two teenagers whose only interests are watching music videos on MTV, goofing off in school and aspiring to one day "score" with some chicks.
Before every episode, they used to run a disclaimer saying that the actions committed by this duo would cause any normal person "to get hurt, expelled, arrested, possibly deported. To put it another way, DON'T try this at home."
Why I found these guys so entertaining as a kid, I don't know... it's just that they did stuff that normal people couldn't (and shouldn't) get away with and seeing them fail or get seriously injured was hilarious to watch.
Beavis and Butt-Head were so popular in the 90's, someone had the genius idea to give these guys their own movie.
The Story
After a crazy dream sequence where the guys are giants terrorizing a city, they wake up to find that their beloved TV had been stolen. The opening credits roll, showing them in the guises of crime-fighting dynamic duos like Starsky and Hutch and the guys from Miami Vice... nothing against this movie, but I still wish THAT movie existed.
The first 10 minutes or so show them going through their hometown of Highland, Texas to find their TV and interacting with some series regulars.
First, they end up at school and they try (and fail) to get away with the TV from the AV room. Their teacher tries to talk them out of it, saying how they'll one day discover there's a bigger world out there and they won't need TV... that doesn't penetrete their thick skulls, so he just says: "listen, I want you to take the TV back to the AV room right now and try to be more open to life experience, um kay?" The moment he leaves, Butt-Head says what everyone was probably thinking, "what a dork..."
They wreck the TV trying to get it down the steps and their neurotic principal expels them.
Next, they go to their neighbor, Tom Anderson's, and watch TV in his new camper. While they do, we hear how he's about to live his lifelong dream of traveling across America with his wife. But Beavis accidentally wrecks that TV by spitting warm soda ("ah, this crap is warm!!") all over it.
Eventually they end up at a motel complex... there's a random room where the Principal (strapped down to his heart covered boxer shorts) is being spanked by a hooker (he expels the guys again after they catch him)... but then they meet a completely new character not from the original TV series.
Muddy wants to hire the guys to "do" his wife and he'll pay them $10,000 plus expenses to do it. Of course, they think he wants them to sleep with his wife, so they eagerly agree to the job. She's hold up in a room in Las Vegas, so they fly out there. On the plane, they meet this old lady who says she'll be hitting the slots (Beavis thinks she means "sluts" so he thinks she's pretty cool). Their first take-off is pretty hilarious. Beavis freaks out they're gonna die and Butt-Head winds up falling to the back of the plane to find a flight attendent he fell in love with ("uhhh, could you do that thing with my belt again?")
Things really escalate when the old lady gives Beavis some pills to perk him up and he immediately morphs into his erratic alter ego, Cornholio. Also, because this film was made before 9/11 happened, he's able to just waltz into the cockpit and he freaks out the pilots so badly with his random appearance that they almost crash the plane.
There's a quick scene at a Vegas hotel lobby where they're dancing to a band performing "Rollercoaster of Love" by the Ohio Players.
(I bring this up because this movie is the first thing we think of whenever we hear that song)
But they meet Dallas in the hotel and she's about to kill them when they explain their predicament.
First, she says she'll double their money if they go back and do him.
Butt-Head: Uh, you want us to do a guy? No way!
Beavis: I dunno, Butt-Head, this is a lot of money. Maybe if we close our eyes and pretend he's a chick... (Butt-Head slaps him) ahh!!
She figures out soon enough that they want to score with her, so she uses this to her advantage. She'd stolen a biologic weapon, the X-5 unit, from a military facility and sews it into Beavis's shorts to smuggle it to her final destination. She also books a bus tour that'll take them to Washington D.C. and she agrees to meet them there.
Right after they leave, the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobocco and Fire Arms) bust into the hotel room to interrogate Dallas. Because she'd managed to smuggle the unit out of the room, they have nothing to legally hold her for more than a couple of hours. But we learn that she and ex-husband Muddy had run a mom & pop smuggling ring.
So the guys trek across America with the senior citizen bus tour... the old lady from the plane is among them so we get to enjoy a bit more of her. She'd "taken a beating" in Vegas so now she's bussing across country.
Their first stop is the Hoover Dam. The guys aren't super impressed, although Beavis asks a pretty funny question ("Excuse me, is this a god dam?"). They go into a control room full of TVs and start pressing random buttons to "change the channel" because they only have shows about water. Somehow, they manage to screw things up so badly that the floodgates are opened and Vegas temporarily loses power.
Of course, the ATF guys are convinced that the guys caused all of this chaos on purpose. It's kinda funny how Beavis and Butt-Head are so stupid and lazy, but we see that these government agents often aren't any more intelligent than they are at times.
Beavis and Butt-Head get separated from the tour group at Yellowstone park. They leave just before Old Faithful has an eruption and get distracted while playing with the motion-sensitive flushing toliets. They wind up getting on a different bus... full of nuns.
There's another montage where they're just being inappropriate as you can imagine. Beavis sees some of the Bible and says how "this book kicks ass" and how there's a talking snake and a naked chick and Adam is covered with only a leaf. Next stop is a church where they go into confession booths and church-goers talk to them like they're priests... considering they get struck by lightning on their way back to the bus, yeah, they didn't act very appropriately.
The nuns decide to ditch them at the Petrified Forest where they're very easily distracted.
Next, they trek through the desert after a guide on premise tells them Washington is about 2,000 miles that way... they keep asking about Washington, I'm surprised nobody directed them to Washington State.
During this journey, they meet a couple of former Motley Crue roadies and based on their conversation and other things happening behind the scenes, these guys are their fathers. Although the bigger dude smacks the smaller dude and says "shut up, dumbass, you didn't score. I scored with both of 'em."
Some time later, they're alone again and are dying of heat exhaustion. Their lives flash before their eyes. Butt-Head's imagination pretty much tells us everythin we already knew- the two of them had spent their whole lives sitting on the coach in front of the TV. Beavis- let's just say his went REALLY far back.
Then we get the one scene everyone remembers, but can't quite explain. Beavis hallucinates an entire music video sequence. Nostaglia Critic listed it among his top 11 mindf**ks because it's just a bunch of nonsense you can't make any sense of it. Fun fact: it was the brainchild of Rob Zombie. (Per the Critic's canon, it's also a "Big-Lipped Alligator Moment"- named after a random scene in "All Dogs Go to Heaven"- because it comes out of nowhere, has no bearing on the plot, and is never mentioned again).
Meanwhile, the ATF tracks Beavis and Butt-Head's personal history back to Highland. A SWAT team breaks into their house and tears it apart. Then they show up at their school while their teacher is singing "Lesbian Seagull" to his class... again, what the hell was that even about?
The interrogation scene's pretty funny, though. The Hippie Teacher tries to tell them there's something called "due process, um kay?" Agent Fleming says that's kind of talk he'd expect from their teacher and has him taken away. His response, "I believe I'm supposed to be read my Miranda rights" and he gets rammed in the gut before he's hauled off to prison.
The principal start to talk about how he never liked Beavis and Butt-Head and Agent Fleming shuts him up: "You've been harboring two criminal masterminds" and he walks away, still shaking.
Then comes a series of dialogue only a handful of people would find funny... I'm including it cuz I'm one of those people.
Agent Bork: "Chief, you know that guy whose camper those guys were whacking off in?"
(They'd previously talked to the Andersons at a traffic stop and had them searched)
Agent Fleming: "Bork, you're a federal agent. You represent the United States government. Never end a sentence with a preposition!"
After some stumbling, he gets it right and proceeds to tell him about how they'd found a couple of possible matches from the local sperm bank for their fathers.
I end sentences with prepositions all the time, but I still find that hilarious. Any good grammar joke is fine by me. We also revisit it later when Bork recognizes Tom Anderson at the White House and he's so concerned with being grammatically correct Fleming tells him "not now, Bork."
I also didn't find out until just before writing this post that Greg Kinnear did his voice. For whatever reason, this role was uncredited. Too bad cuz he's kinda like the Agent Coulson of the ATF. You just want the guy to succeed and be recognized for doing good work for the agency.
Throughout the movie, we also see random scenes with Muddy. He comes back from the airport to find out he'd sent the wrong guys to Vegas. He swears he's gonna track them down and kill all three of them. Somehow, he's able to find them in the desert. Just as he's about to kill them, they says how they're going to meet Dallas in Washington, and he decides to take them with him. And he puts them in the trunk of his car.
Butt-Heads find a jack and spends enough time messing around with it that he manages to open up the trunk. The two of them jump out of the car and cause a massive accident on the highway. They also happen to come across the tour bus with the old people and that takes them the rest of the way.
Considering the bus had gotten pulled over and the riders had all gotten cavity searches, I'm amazed they agreed to let them come back on...
Anyway, they get to Washington D.C. The Capitol Building to be specific. But as they get back on to go to the White House, Beavis starts freaking out because they hadn't met Dallas yet. He proceeds to give a pretty epic speech.
"I won't settle down. Not this time. Dammit! This always happens. I think I'm gonna score and I never score. It's not fair. We'd traveled a hundred miles and I thought we were gonna score, but now it's not gonna happen... I'm sick and tried of this. We're never gonna score. It's just not gonna happen. We're just gonna get old like these people and they've probably scored. Like this chick here's a slut. And look at this guy, he's old, but he's probably scored a million times. But not us! We're never gonna score! We're never gonna score! We're never gonna score!"
And after he'd told him to sit down a bunch of times, the bus driver runs over and beats the ever-loving snot out of him.
The old lady gives him something to help him relax, but unknowingly gives him the other pills and Cornholio makes an epic comeback. At the White House. What could possibly go wrong?
Muddy and Dallas meet again in the parking garage. He thinks he still has the guys in the back of his trunk and flips out when he finds it empty. They appear to be back together because the ATF catches them messing around in the backseat. But after they start talking about making deals and prison time, Dallas sells him out completely.
"He stole the unit. He said he put it in some guy's pants."
Also- this movie was made during the time when Bruce Willis and Demi Moore were together so it's kinda funny seeing them play these roles.
Butt-Head makes sarcastic comments during the tour. Because there's no TV in the dining room, he says "this house sucks." He goes off on his own and meets Chelsea. "I noticed you have braces. I have braces too." And she throws him out the window... where the ATF grab him and give him that cavity search.
Beavis, on the other hand, gets into more shenangians as Cornholio than he would have on his own.
He has a stare-off with a painting of Richard Nixon.
After a few seconds of silence, he says, "Are you threaten' me? I am Cornholio..." He gets to the Oval Office and grabs the red phone. I think it connects him to the Department of Defense and based on his commentary, the General in charge thinks the president is having a mental breakdown and elicit DEF-CON4. And the White House is evacuated.
He also comes across some of the World Leaders who are there for the GPAC conference and talks with them... he's doing all of his typical Cornholio comments and they're actually taking him seriously... it's both hilarious and disturbing at the same time.
Somehow, he makes it outside completely undetected amid the evacuation and finds Tom Anderson's camper. He takes the photo of Dallas out of his pocket and goes inside to... well... something he'd apparently done a bunch of times before.
Tom Anderson was already in a huff about being forced to leave because of the evacuation and is about to drive over to see his congressman about it when he sees his camper shaking in the rearview mirror.
"What the hell... pull your damn pants up, boy. I don't wanna see that. Dammit, get out of here! If I catch you whackin' off in here again, I'm gonna hog-tie ya." And he closes the door to straighten up.
Bork spies him pacing him front of the camper and all of the agents follow suit. They're hesistant at first because there's an apparent flaw with the casing of the unit and they don't want to take a chance hitting it. But despite the fact he's walking around his in undewear, Cornholio continues to run on autopilot and it's funny to see the agents trying to negotiate with him
"This is Agent Bork. Listen, we need some TP and... what else did he say?"
Beavis comes back to his sense and Mr. Anderson comes back out just as they're about to open fire.
Tom Anderson: "And take your damn pants with you."
Agent Fleming: "Hold your fire!"
Anderson: "What the hell?"
Agent Bork: "The pants! He's got the unit!"
Another agent tries to take the pants, only to rip them open and the unit goes flying. In slow motion, it lands in Butt-Head's hand and he hands it over to Agent Fleming like it's no big deal. Everyone breaks out in applause. Tom Anderson gets arrested because they think he'd recruited the other two for his game. They also find the photo of Dalls in his camper.
And to top it all off, the guys get to meet President Clinton and he makes them honorary agent of the ATF.
They get back home and by complete miracle, they find their TV by the motel... and they walk back home into the sunset.
Kind of a light sentimental moment that's marred by them wondering if they'll ever score, trading insults and Beavis saying he needs to stop by Tom Anderson's tool shed for a couple minutes.
But that's basically it. They have this big adventure traveling across America, something most people would kill to experience, but they're too dense to really appreciate it. For anyone who'd watched the series, this movie is pretty predictable in its plot and character arcs. But in its own insane way, it is entertaining. Also something that probably wouldn't be successful in this day and age where so much is considered offensive and culturally insensitive.
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