The problem with taking TV comedy series to the big screen is that you usually have to stretch some already thin material from a half-hour to feature length.
And it's an even more crucial flaw for "Beavis and Butt-head Do America," because, at its best, the television show is only funny for 10- or 15-minute segments at a time - including interruptions for music-video criticism. Unfortunately, there are no video critiques here, just yawn-inspiring stretches in which very little happens.
On top of that, there's even more in the way of junior-high level sex and flatulence jokes than usual. Many of them are so vulgar and so dumb that the film will try the patience of even the most hard-core "Beavis and Butt-head" fans.
The impetus for this weak road picture is the theft of their beloved television. In their search, the headbanging duo runs into Muddy Grimes (a miscredited but recognizable Bruce Willis), a sleazy redneck who actually mistakes them for two hitmen.
Muddy offers them $10,000 to "do" his ex-wife, Dallas (Demi Moore, also miscredited), which, of course, they misunderstand. But when they finally meet up with her, she sends the two off packing across the United States on a tour bus filled with senior citizens.
What they don't know is that Dallas has hidden a secret biological warfare experiment in Beavis' shorts. But an overzealous Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent (Robert Stack, again miscredited) makes them the subject of a massive manhunt.
Along the way, our miscreant heroes manage to open the floodgates of Hoover Dam, cause a blackout in Las Vegas, meet their biological fathers and precipitate two huge, multicar pileups on the highway. Unfortunately, none of this is even remotely funny.
To make things worse, the film's parodies (such as Japanese monster movies like "Godzilla" and "War of the Gargantuas") fall flat. And jokes that work on the show, like Beavis' "Cornholio" routine, seemingly go on forever and are actually just to pad things out to feature length.
The only really good bits are the opening credits (a hilarious parody of '70s cop shows like "Starsky and Hutch" and "Charlie's Angels") and Beavis' drug-inspired hallucination of Hell (featuring animation and music by Rob Zombie from metal act White Zombie).
To his credit, Willis actually brings some life to his character. But Moore's delivery is even more wooden than usual, while Stack is reduced to spouting lines about cavity searches (yuk-yuk).
Also, despite having a much larger animation budget, the film looks so flat and two-dimensional that it actually seems cheaper than the mass-produced TV cartoons.
"Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" is rated PG-13, but really pushes that rating with non-stop profanity and vulgar references and gags, violence, considerable drug use, some partial nudity and two brief sex scenes.