Monday , March 18 2024
If you don't already own them, buy the set, butt muncher.

DVD Review: ‘Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-head: The Complete Collection’

Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-head: The Complete Collection offers nothing new as it brings together the previously released three volumes of Beavis and Butt-Head: The Mike Judge Collection, Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-head Volume 4 (which wasn’t part of The Mike Judge Collection), and the Special Collector’s Edition of the feature film Beavis and Butt-head Do America. For those scoring at home, the set presents 135 episodes out of 222, in an apparently random order, excluding the first season. For longtime fans, it also contains their debut short, “Frog Baseball”, which originally premiered during Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation.

Opening Volume 1 with “No Laughing”, episode 13 from Season 2, the cartoon is as good a place as any to introduce the dim-witted teenagers who appear in a familiar, and what would be a frequent, scenario: getting in trouble at school. Here, they can’t stop laughing inappropriately during class, from words that would make any young boy laugh, such as the last name “Butkis,” to sex education. The series’ early animation style is rather crude with limited figure movement and backgrounds appearing to be drawn in crayons, but it fits the characters.

Next up, is “Home Improvement, episode 9 from Season 2, which involves Mr. Anderson, a precursor to Hank Hill from Judge’s King of the Hill, mistakenly letting the boys paint his house, especially after they huff paint thinner. In the 24th episode of Season 3, “The Crush”, the coloring of the backgrounds appear slightly improved. The episodes continue to be listed arbitrarily throughout until Volume 4, which stays within the eighth season.

Throughout the series, Beavis and Butt-head get into ridiculous misadventures that delicate parents won’t want impressionable children to see, but people who enjoy irresponsible animated antics should enjoy. They try to be cool and fail miserably attempting to score with chicks, although it’s clear they wouldn’t know what to do if they got the chance. There’s a great cast of supporting characters as well, from classmates, the intelligent Daria, who got her own show, and Winger fan Stewart, to their teacher Mr. Van Driessen, a tie-dyed in the wool liberal hippie.

Unfortunately, only the episodes from Volume 4 appear as they originally aired. The music videos and the accompanying commentary by Beavis and Butt-head aren’t included within the episodes from the first three volumes, but there are 39 music videos that they do watch available in the extras. There are also edits to a number of the episodes, a list of which is available at Wikipedia.

There are many other extras included with the TV-show sets, such as an informative, three-part “Taint of Greatness: The Journey of Beavis and Butt-Head”; 16 Special Appearances including the 1994 Video Music Awards with David Letterman; nine Promos, including an outrageous one using footage of David Koresh’s Waco, Texas campground on fire; four themed Montages; the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con Panel announcing the return of the show; four Beavis & Butt-head Interruptions; and a “Silence Your Cell Phone” PSA.

Beavis and Butt-head Do America sees the boys tour the country as they search for their stolen TV set. They travel from Las Vegas to Washington D.C., getting mistaken for hired killers and terrorists by people no smarter than they are. The expansion from six-minute adventures into a feature-length film saga works well in this funny story, which is packed with a number of guest stars.

The movie special features include commentary by co-directors Mike Judge and Yvette Kaplan, the making-of “The Big Picture”, “We’re Gonna Score! Scoring Beavis and Butt-head Do America” with composer John Frizzell, The Smackdown (a three-minute action montage), three MTV News Celebrity Shorts, two teaser Trailers, and 12 TV Spots.

While technically not “complete” since there are a whopping 87 episodes missing, the 12-disc set is still an impressive collection for fans. If you don’t already own them, buy the set, butt muncher.

 

About Gordon S. Miller

Gordon S. Miller is the artist formerly known as El Bicho, the nom de plume he used when he first began reviewing movies online for The Masked Movie Snobs in 2003. Before the year was out, he became that site's publisher. Over the years, he has also contributed to a number of other sites as a writer and editor, such as FilmRadar, Film School Rejects, High Def Digest, and Blogcritics. He is the Founder and Publisher of Cinema Sentries. Some of his random thoughts can be found at twitter.com/GordonMiller_CS

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