Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

I’ve decided to do a multi-part series reviewing and reintroducing to you, my dear readers, some of the best lost or forgotten film treasures of the 1980s. This task was quite difficult for me to put together, since there were a couple of films I had to promptly remove from my list, once I finally sat down re-watched them (Explorers specifically comes to mind recently). Most of these movies I watched growing up as a child or young teenager. Only one film listed in this series was introduced to me at a much later time.

Some of the films I have chosen may be near and dear to your heart, like they are to me. Maybe some of these pictures you’ve heard of, but hadn’t thought about them in years. Others, however, you might feel to be either too cheesy or just plain crap; or as I like to call them, cinematic turds. I’ve especially tried to stay away from as many big blockbusters as I can, since Steven Spielberg has had his fingerprints on at least fifteen financially successful and quite popular films throughout that decade alone. (The final tally shows that I’ve only picked two films where Spielberg was the Executive Producer.) Be that as it may, I chose to pick specific movies from my past that have had some sort of impact on my upbringing, and I continued to re-watch them since their initial introduction into my life.

Each week I plan to provide at least one review, listed alphabetically by title as opposed to chronologically or in any order of emotional importance or significance. So without further ado, here's

Part One of Lost & Forgotten Film Treasures of the 1980s.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
Directed by Stephen Herek
Written by Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon
Running Time: 90 minutes



“Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.”

The first time I remembered seeing this movie, it was at the drive-in. Drive-Ins were still rather popular in 1989 and the whole event seemed much cheaper than dragging your entire family to the movie theater. Food could be snuck in, you didn’t have to worry about people talking behind you, and if the second film of the double-feature stunk, you could drive off and still get to bed on time.

For those not familiar with the plotline, I’ll give you a quick rundown: Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) are two dimwitted high school students who are on the verge of flunking their senior year at San Dimas High School. They only have one saving grace in hopes to graduate: ace their high school history class presentation. While on a study break at the Circle-K, Bill and Ted are visited by Rufus (George Carlin), a man who claims to be from the future. Rufus has been given the assignment to assist the two high school losers by letting them use a “time traveling telephone booth” to help them put together their history presentation. According to Rufus, Bill and Ted are considered “the great ones” seven hundred years into the future, whose music has aligned the planets and brought world peace. However, if they don’t graduate, Ted will be shipped off to Alaska Military Academy and they’ll never be able to form their band “Wyld Stallyns” or create their music.

What I really enjoy about this film is that even though there are some rather cheesy moments, including Bill and Ted playing “air guitar” throughout the picture, it’s quite the ingenious script. It starred a large cast of mostly nobodies, with a few cameos like Jane Wiedlin (from The Go-Go’s) as Joan of Arc and Clarence Clemons (from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band) as one of “The Three Most Important People in the World.” Alex Winter had received the most noticeable screen fame at that time for portraying a vampire in The Lost Boys back in 1987, but this movie was really Keanu Reeves’ launching pad and typecast him forever as an airhead, which isn’t completely inaccurate. Reeves had been in a hand full of other films before Bill & Ted, but it wasn’t until this film and the release of Parenthood later that year, which firmly placed him on the map.

The biggest reason why Bill & Ted made this list was that it was a funny and creative, yet semi-educational movie, which my parents approved of because its subject matter was generally clean. There aren’t many PG films released nowadays, and those that are, usually don’t do very well at the box office. Most of the adult-natured jokes that were made (“Sixty-nine, dudes!”) went right over my thirteen-year-old head and didn’t sink in until after I was halfway through high school. It brought historical figures that I read about to life and put them into situations that seemed, at that time, relatively implausible. Who wouldn’t enjoy tossing a nerf football with Billy the Kid or Socrates? Just imagine the conversations you could have, especially if you spoke ancient Greek.

My family drove through San Dimas every time we were en route to my grandparent’s house, so after the film’s release, it became relatable to me on a more personal level. "Waterloo," the water park featured in the movie was actually Raging Waters, the largest water park in California. Only later would I discover that 95% of the movie was actually filmed on location in and around Phoenix, Arizona.

As much as Bill & Ted was a success, it also had the unfortunate repercussions of generically labeling a specific stereotype related to living in southern California. Just like the stereotypical Southern redneck or New York city slicker, the American general public presumed that most, if not all teenagers who lived in southern California, talked, dressed, and acted like a stoned loser who used the words “bogus” and “dude” in their vocabulary on a regular basis.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure sat on the shelves for almost two years before it was released when the film’s original distributor went bankrupt (it was later purchased by Orion, which ironically went bankrupt ten years later). The film was released in February of 1989 and was quite the commercial success, generating over $40 million in ticket sales on a budget of $10 million. The film’s success went on to produce the less-than-stellar sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, as well as a Saturday morning cartoon series that ran for 21 episodes back in 1990-91 and actually featured the voices of Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter and George Carlin.

For those who are interested in visiting or re-visiting a bit of nostalgia from the late 1980s, I highly recommend Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The movie is pure escapism that combines quirky situational humor with the science fiction of time travel. You’ll find yourself laughing quite a bit during the entire movie, whether in response to the off played, yet sometimes brilliant dialogue, or at the fashion and fads of a movie that’s now twenty years old. (When was the last time you seriously saw a telephone booth, let alone a functioning one?)