Review: Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head “Two Stupid Men/Freaky Friday”

Overview

Two Stupid Men

Middle-aged Beavis and Butt-Head fulfill their civic duty as jurors by voting against the prospect of convicting the criminal of any wrong doing. As it turns out, Beavis and Butt-Head show some compelling evidence but the guys change their mind anyway. They get their $14 and get a bunch of booze to celebrate.

Cutaways

Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion “WAP”, Zip Tied to a Tree

Freaky Friday

Beavis and Butt-Head mistakenly think they have switched bodies after a big guy smashes their heads together like two watermelons. As a result, the two start kicking their own asses but own all of the pain so they find the big guy from earlier and convince him to smash their heads again, therefore “reversing” the Freaky Friday bit.

Cutaways

Olivia Rodrigo-Driver’s License

Our Take

Ah yes, the classic Freaky Friday premise that has been the plot for about a dozen other movies. In any event, the way the event transpires is hilarious, and anybody who is a fan of Jim Carrey’s Liar Liar, specifically the scene where he kicks his own ass in the bathroom, because that’s this entire episode. A classic format for these guys to tackle that pays off in it’s stupidity.

The funnier of the two might be the guys doing jury duty. Another classic premise, and it’s one of the perfect reasons why you have a middle-aged adaptation of the series. The episode features one of my favorite Beavis and Butt-Head tropes when they miraculously get something right because of their stupidity that somehow stumps the rest of the crowd. In the past, victims have been federal agencies as depicted in both feature-length films, in this case, it’s a jury of their peers.

Two classic premises are getting the Beavis and Butt-Head remix that offers a boat-load of gut-punching laugh moments. This series shows no signs of slowing down. Yes, the underlying premises aren’t exactly revolutionary, but this franchise has made a living by teasing premises, whether it’s premises of music videos or, now, clips of social networks. The one complaint I have is that when the guys go to the cutaways, some of the jokes feel like they are being written with one-arm tied behind their back. It’s almost like a fear of upsetting a long-standing established order of the hip hop/zoomer industry continuing to feed the MTV Entertainment beast. It’s a fear that the producers of South Park do not have, but a room with a few Hollywood writers (no matter how talented they are) possibly jaded by an increasingly embattled “what can we say?” pathos, fortunately the show proper is still solid enough that it helps mask those shortcomings.