From the oblivious Tom Anderson (a likely cousin of King of the Hill's Hank Hill) to Mr. Everything in the film works as both as straight humor and also as social commentary. I found just about everything in the film hilarious and worthy of being considered satire.
Now to this film in particular, the pair have their precious television stolen and they then set out to find a replacement, which has them mistaken for hitmen and puts them in the middle of government espionage and intrigue, of which they are completely oblivious. Admittedly, many youth at the time missed the intended irony and instead enjoyed the TV series for all the wrong reasons, but that's not a reason to dismiss the characters outright.
Beavis & Butt-Head were never presented as characters to to aspire to or intended to be seen as "cool." They were made by their creators to be held up for ridicule and to be mocked. I think it's this element of satire that many critics missed back when Beavis & Butt-Head originally aired. The medium may have changed, but a satire of youth culture being dumbed down (to a ridiculously low level of by our two heroes) is still just as relevant today. Today, youth consume pop culture instead through any number of social media apps and streaming apps/devices, rather than one channel and Tiger Beat magazine. However, it may be that I'm now older and and am just cranky old man bemoaning "kids these days." Back in 1996, MTV was the main source of youth pop culture and Beavis & Butt-Head were a hilarious sent up of MTV's lowest common denominator fans. I remember grudgingly liking the film, but rewatching after having not seen Beavis & Butt-Head in quite some time, the film felt pretty fresh and surprisingly prescient given the amount of pop culture youth take in today, along with the dumbing down society (also see Mike Judge's underrated satire "Idiocracy" for further explorations of these same themes). I remember when it originally came out that Beavis & Butt-Head were pretty played out by this point and a feature length theatrical film filled with big names voicing characters (Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Robert Stack, Cloris Leachman, Eric Bogosian, Richard Linklater, Greg Kinnear, David Spade, and David Letterman as a Roadie) seemed like overkill. I'm in the former category and was pleasantly surprised by how funny I still found this film. Those who find Beavis & Butt-Head hilarious and those who find them unbearable.
There are two kinds of people in this world.
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