Beavis and Butthead Do America - I really liked this film when I was nineteen

I remember going to see ‘Beavis and Butthead Do America’ when it came out in the cinema back in 1996.  I was nineteen and had never bothered to watch the cartoon it was based on.  My expectations were low, but I found the whole film hilarious and couldn’t believe how I’d never watched the TV show before.

Now, as the decades have passed, I occasionally slip the DVD back into the machine, namely to try and recapture whatever I originally saw in it.  I’ve watched it about three times since the cinema.  Each time I can barely raise a smile.  In the TV series, the two titular characters spend much of their time on their sofa, watching the television.  Therefore, in order to give the film a little more scope, they’re set is quickly stolen, giving them an excuse to leave the confines of their house and go on a road trip across America.  Naturally, it isn’t just as easy as buying a new telly.  They also get caught up in a plot to assassinate someone and inadvertently transport a weapon of mass destruction across the country.

However, despite all the many different directions the film now goes in, I still don’t find it as funny as the first time I watched it.  The ATF agent charged with the task of hunting the two ‘fugitives’ down it still quite funny.  He has a ‘catchphrase’ still gets an audible chuckle out of me every time he uses it (if you haven’t already seen it, I won’t spoil it for you).  But, he’s about the high-point of the film – in my now adult opinion.  And, seeing as he’s only a peripheral character, I find I’m not getting as many laughs out of the central characters as I am a secondary one.

Maybe this film appeals to younger people.  Maybe I’ve outgrown its deliberately ‘low-brow’ humour.  Maybe it’s a sign I should never watch anything that ‘kids today’ enjoy?  I guess that Beavis and Butthead Do America spells the end of my illusion that I’m still part of that demographic.  I’ll still probably watch it again in a couple of years just in case my opinion has changed back again.

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights