Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) Orion/Comedy-Sci-Fi RT: 90 minutes Rated PG (language, suggestive humor, comic violence including gunplay, teen drinking) Director: Stephen Herek Screenplay: Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon Music: David Newman Cinematography: Timothy Suhrstedt Release date: February 17, 1989 (US) Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Terry Camilleri, Dan Shor, Tony Steedman, Rod Loomis, Al Leong, Jane Wiedlin, Robert V. Barron, Clifford David, Hal Landon Jr., Bernie Casey, Amy Stoch, J. Patrick McNamara, Frazier Bain, Diane Franklin, Kimberley Kates (as “Kimberly LaBelle”), Clarence Clemons, Fee Waybill, Martha Davis. Box Office: $40.5M (US)
Rating: *** ½
How’s this for an oxymoron, brilliant stupidity? It’s perhaps the perfect way to describe the goofy time travel comedy Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure starring Keanu Reeves (Rivers Edge) and Alex Winter (Death Wish 3) as a pair of cheerfully dumb San Dimas teens in danger of failing their history class if they don’t score an A+ on their final report. There’s a lot more riding on it than summer school like, say, the future of humanity.
Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Reeves) have big dreams for their fledgling garage band Wyld Stallyns. Never mind that they can’t play their instruments. Their scholastic skills aren’t any better. Much to the dismay of their history teacher (Casey, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka), they think Caesar is the “salad dressing dude” and Joan of Arc is Noah’s wife. He warns them of their imminent failure if they do anything less than stellar work on their report. Ted’s strict father (Landon, Scavenger Hunt), a local cop, threatens to ship his son off to military school in Alaska if he fails. If Bill and Ted are separated, it would be bad. It would alter the course of history in a most heinous way. They must pass the class.
To that end, the leaders of a futuristic utopian society (circa 2688) send help in the form of Rufus (Carlin, Outrageous Fortune) who time travels back to 1988. He appears to the dumb-founded high schoolers in the parking lot of the local Circle K. He suggests the best way to understand history is to see it firsthand. For that purpose, he presents Bill and Ted with a time machine shaped like a phone booth. In it, they can travel through the circuits of time to any point in history. Their plan is to collect various historical figures and bring them to present-day San Dimas (i.e. 1988) to assist them with their assignment. Of course, they encounter a few problems on their excellent adventure, the biggest being their near-execution in medieval times.
In case you’re interested, here’s who the guys bring back with them to ’88: Napoleon (total dick!), Billy the Kid, Socrates (who the guys keep calling “So-crates”), Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc (played by Go-Go guitarist Jane Wiedlin) and Abraham Lincoln. Naturally, all sorts of wackiness ensues, especially when they’re let loose in a shopping mall.
Directed by Stephen Herek (Critters), Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is absolutely nonsensical and a whole lot of silly fun. It may not attain the level of wit and intelligence as Back to the Future, but I’m thinking Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon didn’t hold such high aspirations when they wrote the screenplay. Its journey from script to screen is an adventure in itself. It was difficult to generate much interest among distributors until they found an ally in uber-producer Dino DeLaurentiis who planned to release it through DEG until it went under in ’88. After a successful test screening for audiences pulled from malls, Orion picked it up and post-production was completed. It went on to be a modest success at the box office and an even bigger cult hit once it landed on video and cable TV.
Boy, did I get off-track! Let’s get back to the review. I think Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a riot. It works primarily because its two leads have wonderful chemistry. Their characters are a perfect fit for one another. Speaking mainly in the style of Valley teens, they have their own lingo, describing things as “heinous”, “egregious” and “bodacious”. In the movie’s most famous scene, they react to the news of being put in an iron maiden torture device by exclaiming “Excellent!” and doing their trademark air guitar gesture. Iron Maiden, as in the popular heavy metal band. Trust me, it was funny in ’89. ANYWAY, Reeves and Winter are most non-heinous in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Comedian Carlin is also very good as Rufus, bringing his own personality to the character minus all the bad language (hey, it’s PG).
The special effects are actually pretty decent without being the slightest bit innovative. Sure, they’re not ILM, but Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure isn’t exactly a Star Wars movie now, is it? I like the set design, especially in the future scene where Bill and Ted learn why passing history is so crucial to mankind. BTW, do the three members of the ruling body look familiar? They should if you’re a music fan. They are Clarence Clemons (The E Street Band), Fee Waybill (The Tubes) and Martha Davis (The Motels). Look also for the lovely Diane Franklin (Better Off Dead) as one of the medieval princesses the guys fall head over heels for. The other is Kimberly Kates of Chained Heat II.
There are a lot of laughs to be had in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I wouldn’t dream of spoiling all of them, but I want to mention one of my favorite bits, Ted philosophizing with Socrates. Who’d have ever thought there was a correlation between “Dust in the Wind” and Days of Our Lives? It’s mind-blowing when you think about it.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is the kind of comedy that chases away the blues. It’s riotously funny and mindless without being brain dead like most teen comedies. Like I said at the beginning, it’s brilliant in it stupidity. They say its takes an intelligent person to play dumb convincingly. If that’s so, Reeves and Winter must be charter members of Mensa.
