Beavis and Butt-Head Do America

Did You Know?

• David Letterman (credited as Earl Hofert) cameos as a Mötley Crüe roadie.
• The film was released on Blu-ray for the first time on December 7, 2021, in commemoration of its 25th anniversary.
• A sequel, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, was released on June 23, 2022.

Plot

The theft of their television sets Beavis and Butt-Head on a quest to find a replacement. After failing to get a new TV through other means, they stumble into a motel that provides one in every room. There, they encounter Muddy Grimes, who misidentifies them as contract killers and proposes a $10,000 payment to "do" his wife, Dallas, in Las Vegas. Interpreting "do" as a sexual act, Butt-Head persuades Beavis that this is their chance to finally have sex and buy a new television. Muddy transports them to the airport. Once in Las Vegas, the pair reaches their hotel room, but Dallas catches them eavesdropping and points a gun at them. She offers them $20,000 to "do" Muddy, which they decline, instead bickering over who will "do" her first. Recognizing their confusion, Dallas hides the X-5 unit, a stolen biological weapon, inside Beavis's shorts and instructs them to meet her at the U.S. Capitol. They board a tour bus. Their accidental destruction of the Hoover Dam leads ATF Agent Flemming to believe they are brilliant criminals, landing them on the FBI's most-wanted list. In Yellowstone National Park, they mistakenly board a bus filled with nuns, who are disgusted and leave them stranded in Petrified Forest National Park. Trekking through the desert, they meet two former Mötley Crüe roadies, unaware these men are their biological fathers. Back at the motel, Muddy encounters the actual hitmen and vows to hunt down and kill Beavis, Butt-Head, and Dallas. The hitmen, who had stolen the boys' TV, abandon it outside the motel. Waking to find the drifters gone, Beavis and Butt-Head continue walking until dehydration and weakness set in. Beavis bites into a peyote cactus, triggering hallucinations. Muddy locates them and stuffs them into his trunk. In Virginia, they escape onto the interstate, sparking a 400-car pileup. They stroll past the wreckage, reboard the tour bus, and stop at the Capitol before heading to the White House. Muddy captures Dallas in a parking garage, but she seduces him, and they have sex in his car, leading to their arrest by the ATF.

Production

The idea for a Beavis and Butt-Head movie started in 1993 as part of a deal with MTV, David Geffen, and Warner Bros. Geffen was so confident in the TV show that he pushed for both a film and a record album. At first, they planned to make it live-action, with David Spade and Adam Sandler considered for the lead roles. But when MTV’s parent company Viacom bought Paramount Communications on July 7, 1994, Paramount Pictures joined the project, replacing Warner Bros. and scrapping the live-action idea because series creator Mike Judge insisted on animation. Judge later said the production was very disorganized and struggled because most of the crew came from TV, not film. The animation was done by Rough Draft Korea. The hallucination sequence was designed and animated to look like Rob Zombie’s work, with Chris Prynoski directing it.

When the movie aired on MTV on August 7, 1999, a deleted scene played afterward. In it, Beavis tries to use the bathroom at the National Archives but finds no toilet paper. Meanwhile, Butt-Head is annoyed because the urinals don’t have the automatic flushers he liked at Yellowstone. After the tour group sees the Declaration of Independence, Beavis sneaks out, breaks the glass case with the flagpole, and steals the document to use as toilet paper. While guards rush over, Beavis cleans up and walks out with a piece of the Declaration—including John Hancock’s signature—stuck to his shoe. This scene isn’t on the DVD, but it’s discussed in the commentary track, where Judge says it didn’t test well with audiences.

Another deleted scene showed Chelsea Clinton packing to leave the White House. It was filmed as a backup in case Bill Clinton lost the 1996 election to Bob Dole, replacing the scene where Butt-Head meets Chelsea in her bedroom. By spring 1996, Judge decided to keep the original scene because he felt sure Clinton would win—which he did that November.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack album is missing a few tracks: "Mucha Muchacha," the Mr. Van Driessen-sung version of "Lesbian Seagull," and the score pieces by The London Metropolitan Orchestra, which came out on a different record. Isaac Hayes wrote and performed "Two Cool Guys," a loose parody of his own "Theme from Shaft." It uses the Beavis and Butt-Head TV theme as a rhythm guitar part, and series creator Mike Judge shares a co-writing credit on the liner notes. The opening credits, set to this song, spoof 1970s cop movies and shows. The version of Ozzy Osbourne's "Walk on Water" on the soundtrack is not the one in the film; the movie uses an earlier demo, which appears on Osbourne's Prince of Darkness box set. Both Osbourne and co-writer Jim Vallance prefer that film demo. The song reached number 28 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart from radio play. AC/DC's "Gone Shootin'" fits the series well, as Judge later admitted the show's theme guitar solo is that AC/DC solo played backwards. The soundtrack got a special edition LP picture disc re-release in 2016.

Reception

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America hit theaters on December 20, 1996, and debuted at number one in North America, pulling in $20.1 million over its opening weekend. It outperformed Jerry Maguire, 101 Dalmatians, Scream, and One Fine Day. That opening weekend set a new record for December, beating the previous high held by Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The record stood until Scream 2 topped it a year later. The film also held the December opening weekend record for an animated movie until The Princess and the Frog broke it in 2009, and it kept the highest opening weekend for a PG-13 animated film until The Simpsons Movie took that title in 2007. With a $12 million production budget, the movie earned $63.1 million at the U.S. box office. CinemaScore audiences gave it an average grade of B+. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it a "vulgar" satire on American youth and compared it favorably to Wayne's World. On Siskel and Ebert, Gene Siskel gave it a "modest recommendation," charmed by the lead characters, and both critics gave it a "two thumbs up" rating. Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly graded it a C+, noting that it "turns from spoofing teenage dimness to merely embodying it." In a 25th anniversary retrospective for Jacobin, Leonard Pierce praised the film's ongoing relevance, calling it "the greatest satire of the twenty-first-century American security state." He added that it remains "painfully funny" with a "distinctly 2020s nervous energy" and concluded that it "seems far fresher today than anything Matt Stone and Trey Parker have done this century."