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New Beastie Boys Video: 25 Years Of Fighting To Party

The Beastie Boys, present-day.
Phil Andelman
/
Courtesy of EMI Records
The Beastie Boys, present-day.

In 1986, the Beastie Boys released a video for "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)," the first single from their first album, Licensed to Ill. In that video, the three Beastie Boys crashed a party and trashed an apartment. In the early days of MTV, it was one of the channel's most popular videos. 25 years later, the Boys have finally made a sequel.

In the original "Fight for Your Right" video, the mayhem instigated by Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D was mostly of the juvenile prankster variety. Punch got spiked. A TV got smashed with a sledgehammer. Many, many whipped cream pies were thrown.

The new, 22-minute-long film, which aired Wednesday night on Comedy Central, picks up right where the original ended, with the Beasties sneaking out of the party they've just trashed. Now, though, they're played by younger film stars — Seth Rogen as Mike D, Danny McBride as MCA, Elijah Wood as Ad-Rock. The mayhem, once the three punks hit the street, is as messy and irreverent as ever.

Above, the short version of the film. To see the full 22 minutes you'll have to get some basic cable and hope for the best.

The 2011 budget is bigger, and the victims of the Beasties antics are all played by Hollywood stars. Ted Danson as a maitre'd. Chloe Sevigny, Kirsten Dunst and Maya Rudolph as three rock fans the boys meet in the back of a limo. These cameos are brief — just a few seconds each, until the film's final chapter, in which our heroes run smack into another version of themselves, sent from the future, and played by John C. Reilly, Jack Black and Will Ferrell.

These are paunchy, gray-haired versions of the "Fight For Your Right" Beasties, Guys who never grew up, never organized Tibetan Freedom Concerts, never advocated for the rights of women at large concerts, who just kept raising hell and fighting for their right to party, unchecked, for 25 years.

Think of it as a statement: even though their music has stayed vibrant, playful and young, the men behind it have grown up. And they're really happy to be grown up. As MCA says in "Make Some Noise," the song that soundtracks Fight For Your Right Revisited, "My rhymes age like wine as I get older." Let's hope the Beastie Boys keep getting older.

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