Movie Review: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

Title: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Release Date: February 17, 1989
Director: Stephen Herek
Production Company: Interscope Communications | Nelson Entertainment
Summary/Review:

I watched this movie once 30 years ago, found it mildly amusing, and never thought to revisit it until now.  Surprisingly, it holds up better than I remember it.  The movie is basically dumb fun about a the titular high school kids, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) who love heavy metal and slack off at school.  A time traveler from the future, Rufus (George Carlin), informs them that they must pass their history presentation and allows them to use his time traveling phone booth to study the past.

The basic plot involves Bill and Ted traveling to various historic eras and gathering up historic figures.  Some of the gags fall flat, but most of them remain humorous.  What surprises me is that the movie is rather wholesome considering it covers territory previously explored in much raunchier movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Weird Science. Bill and Ted also have a hilariously erudite vocabulary.  The characters can be very dumb but also very smart when it’s needed for the plot, and somehow it works.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure remains excellent cornball comedy from the 80s.

Rating: ***1/2

Movie Review: Fourteen (2020)

Title: Fourteen
Release Date: May 15, 2020
Director: Dan Sallitt
Production Company: Static Productions
Summary/Review:

I watched Fourteen through a virtual screening for the Brattle Theatre, in Cambridge, MA. The movie focuses on two women in their twenties who have been friends since junior high school and retain that friendship as they set out on their individual life paths in Brooklyn.  Mara (Tallie Medel) is a  quietly competent and driven type working as a teacher’s assistant, studying for a graduate degree, and writing a novel in her spare time.  Jo (Norma Kuhling) appears more relaxed, has an acerbic wit, and works as social worker.  It becomes clear early on that Mara is a caretaker, doing things like making sure that Jo isn’t chronically late for work, while Jo makes Mara push her own boundaries.

The movie is impressionist in style, showing short scenes of the two women alone and together over a decade or so.  They cycle through boyfriends, jobs, and apartments with some cathartic moments thrown into the mundanity of everyday life.  Over time, the two women grow apart albeit with no great precipitating event although the challenges to their relationship are evident from the start.  Jo also begins a downward spiral into depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.

Fourteen is a very honest and realistic depiction of life and relationships done with excellent writing, direction, editing, and acting.

Rating: ***1/2