Parents' Guide to

Beavis and Butt-head Do America

By Charles Cassady Jr., Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

MTV spin-off for "mature" lovers of really stupid humor.

Movie PG-13 1996 81 minutes
Beavis and Butt-head Do America Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

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age 12+

Based on 8 parent reviews

Accurate P.
Accurate P. Parent of 15-year-old
August 16, 2022
age 13+

One of the greatest comedy films ever made.

Rated M13

This title has:

Too much sex
1 person found this helpful.
wintermd
wintermd Parent of 4, 8 and 11-year-old
July 2, 2010
age 17+

good for adults, terrible for 17 and below

this movie is full of stupid sexual humor and deliquent behavior. I wouldn't let my children watch it unless they were adults.

This title has:

Too much sex
Too much swearing
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
1 person found this helpful.
See all 8 parent reviews

What's the Story?

This was the first feature outing for MTV cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-head -- actually caricatures of the worst-case-scenario of the channel's music-video fans: two unsupervised, low-IQ, no-achieving boyhood pals with limited vocabularly who mainly just sit and watch TV and categorize everything they see into "cool" or "sucks." Here Beavis and Butt-head (both voiced by creator Mike Judge) wake up to find their precious television stolen. Going door to door at a motel in search of some way to see Baywatch, the duo are mistaken for bargain-rate assassins by a redneck weapons-dealer (Bruce Willis), who gives them plane tickets to Las Vegas to "do" his treacherous wife (Demi Moore). B&B, naturally, assume their job is to have sex with the woman. Their trashy target fools the boys into proceeding cross-country towards Washington D.C., fugitives from an FBI team hunting a top-secret germ-warfare agent that has been secretly sewn into Beavis' shorts.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (8):
Kids say (35):

Beavis and Butt-head are probably better suited for tweens than their R-rated (and smarter) live-action counterparts, the drug-fixated Harold and Kumar. Parents and teachers hated early Beavis and Butt-head cartoons, which had animal cruelty, setting fires, and other anarchic behavior as crudely animated (if sometimes hilarious) gags. Filmmaker Mike Judge, with later work like King of the Hill and The Goode Family, proved he could do (he-he, we said "do") subtle, quirky, and touching humor on human nature, and if you judge these two characters by that standard it's clear they're not supposed to be glorified heroes in any traditional sense. Yes, they're OK in the end, but they never "score," they learn nothing, and the movie kind of suggests that the whole society is on a treadmill to idiocy too; these guys just got there first.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the appeal of Beavis and Butt-head. What makes these louts funny? Where is the line between funny and offensive?

  • What other characters in TV and movies are meant to be laughed at for their stupidity? Which characters are the funniest? Which ones miss the mark?

Movie Details

  • In theaters: December 20, 1996
  • On DVD or streaming: September 12, 2006
  • Cast: Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Mike Judge
  • Director: Mike Judge
  • Studio: Paramount Pictures
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Run time: 81 minutes
  • MPAA rating: PG-13
  • MPAA explanation: continuous crude sex-related humor and language, and for a drug-related scene.
  • Last updated: April 28, 2023

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