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