Movie Review: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Silly fun, and lots of it

Cons: Some plot holes, but we're talking about a time traveling phone booth

The Bottom Line: 

Yes, plot holes abound

But let that go and enjoy

Cause it's lots of fun

How Many Historical Dudes Can Fit in a Phone Booth?

Among the list of movies I’ve never seen but heard about a lot was Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.  I say was because at a recent movie night with friends, we watched it.  As I’d heard, it’s silly, but it is definitely fun.

Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are two high school slackers/wanna be musicians.  All they care about is how to get Eddie Van Halen to front their band.  It might help if they could play instruments, but they’ll work on that later.

Unfortunately for them, they’ve been neglecting their studies.  There only hope of passing history is to get an A+ on their oral history project.  If they flunk, Ted is going to be shipped off to a military academy – inAlaska.

As they are trying to cram just a bit of history into their heads, a guy (George Carlin) shows up in a telephone booth.  It seems the entire future rests on them passing this class.  How will the time traveling phone booth help them get the grade they need?

Let’s start off with the obvious.  This movie doesn’t just say it came out in the 80’s (1989 to be exact), but is screams it at the top of its lungs.  The fashions, the hair, the music, just about every second lets you know in no uncertain terms that this movie is dated.  Not to mention that Bill and Ted use so much slang of the hip crowd of the day.

In fact, I’d argue that instead of being characters they are more spoofs of the slackers of their day.  At times, the act gets tiresome, but actually for most of the movie it’s very funny.  I was certainly laughing throughout the film.

Now, this movie involves time travel and history, but it is designed to be a comedy and nothing more.  It’s silly fun, but as that it succeeds in spades.  I laughed the entire way through.  The lines, the antics, the story was just perfect for it.  Even if you see the joke coming, it’s still funny.  The script was certainly well done.

However, the acting also pulls it off.  Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves are both perfect and carry the movie.  The many historical figures are actually quite funny as well and stay perfectly in character, so all those actors did great jobs.  Granted, the script never calls for anything really difficult, so there are no performances that will blow you away, but they fit the script and spirit of the film.

Because of the silliness of the film, anyone thinking they'll actually learn anything about history from this film will be sadly mistaken.  Really, the people you'll see here are caricatures of their historical personas anyway.  Frankly, there are jokes you'll get more if you know who they are before you start watching the film, and really just a basic knowledge of history is all that is required.

I do have some issues with the movie, however.  For example, you need to really suspend belief.  Yes, the film involves a time traveling telephone booth.  And yet I kept thinking how certain aspects made no sense, like how they could or couldn’t pin point the time they’d land whenever it suited the plot or how they pulled off their elaborate project.  And surely they were flunking other classes, right?  It was obviously a bit hard to completely turn off my inner logic critic, but I did try.  And the movie is so much fun it wasn't that hard to just get lost in the story.

There are some instances of profanity and a few sexually suggestive bits that I was uncomfortable with.  Fortunately, they were a minor part of the movie.

I don’t think Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure should be on any must see list, but it is fun.  If you’ve missed it and you get a chance, watch it.  You’ll find yourself laughing before you know it.