By JONAH GRAY
“Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” is just that — pure, unadulterated excellence. Set in 1988 San Dimas, California, “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” stars Alex Winter as Bill and Keanu Reeves as Ted. The two are, at best, described as dim-witted yet charming doofuses. Although idiotic at times, both Bill and Ted flaunt a colorful vocabulary featuring words like “bodacious,” “bogus,” “heinous” and “egregious.”
Bill and Ted have one goal in life: to rise to fame with their band, the Wyld Stallyns. Although, in their academic deliberations, they can’t seem to decide whether learning to play guitar, filming an epic music video or recruiting Eddie Van Halen is the first step to their success — spoiler alert: Eddie Van Halen isn’t the answer.
Unfortunately, step one to becoming successful rock stars is passing their high school history exam, where they must give a presentation about historical figures’ thoughts on today’s society. This task may not sound very difficult, but Bill and Ted are miles behind in history. Despite their stellar vocabulary, they can’t seem to get their history quite right. To them, Napoleon is just “some short dead dude,” and Socrates is listed in the history book under “So-Crates.”
Believing they are “destined to flunk most egregiously,” Rufus, played by George Carlin, is sent from the year 2688 and gifts them with his time-traveling phone booth. He informs them it is imperative for the future that they pass their history class. Otherwise, Ted will be sent to military school, and they won’t form the righteous band, Wyld Stallyns, which is the key to world peace in the future.
With a time-traveling phonebooth, Bill and Ted do the only logical thing: capture historical figures and bring them to the future to hear their thoughts on San Dimas. Of course, things don’t go exactly as planned along the way, and they run into some very “non-triumphant” situations that only two fools could stumble their way out of.
In an era of time-travel flicks such as “Back to the Future,” “Time Bandits” and “The Terminator,” Bill and Ted close out the ’80s with a hilarious, easy-watching classic. This movie doesn’t bother taking itself too seriously, describing time travel as a simple wonder of modern technology in 2688.
Sitting at just 90 minutes, this movie takes no time to get started and keeps viewers entranced as we bumble through time with our dim-witted duo. Like many films of the 1980s, the PG rating is a bit loose. With some adult themes and “colorful” vocabulary, this movie likely would be PG-13 today.
Even if you don’t mind your kids hearing foul language, some additional maturity will likely protect your ears from many “excellents,” “bodaciouses” and “boguses.” Plus, you wouldn’t want them to call Socrates “So-Crates” for the rest of their lives. I may be guilty of a few of these.
Most importantly, this movie has a central moral pillar. Bill and Ted are forever dedicated to the proposition that was true in the ’80s and holds true now: Be excellent to each other.
And —
Party on, dudes!
