Blu Ray Review: Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure

13th May 2014

Here’s a terrifying fact: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure came out 25 years ago. That’s right – it was 1989 when we saw a pre-charisma lobotomy Keanu Reeves play Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan and Alex Winter (in his weird crop-top thing) play Bill S. Preston for the first time. What better way to celebrate this fact than enjoy their first adventure in sparkling HD?

For those that don’t know already (and, c’mon, what have you been doing with your life?) Bill and Ted are two high school slackers, more concerned with bashing out terrible riffs in their band ‘Wyld Stallyns’ than bothering with academic work. When their History teacher threatens to fail them, they have one chance left – a History presentation in front of the whole school – in 24 hours time. It’s a beautifully simple premise – but how are these hearts-of-gold idiots possibly going to pass? With the help of a phone box of course.

You see, it turns out that Bill and Ted will eventually be the saviours of humanity. They don’t know it yet, but the music of Wyld Stallyns will unite the world and bring peace to mankind. If they fail History, Ted will be shipped off to a military academy by his Father, and the band will be no more. To stop this calamity, Rufus (George Carlin) is sent from the future to provide our heroes with the means to make a most triumphant presentation – a time machine.

Off they travel through different eras, picking up such historical celebs as Billy the Kid, Napoleon, Socrates and more, with both Reeves and Winter gamely wrapping their tongues around Bill and Ted’s wonderfully superfluous manner of speaking. Seeing an American teenager with surf-bum call something bad ‘most egregious’ is innately hilarious.

The film is somewhat dated – effects are a little wobbly in a pleasingly 80’s way, and despite Bill and Ted’s motto, “Be excellent to each other”, there is a particularly cloying moment for us 21st Century Guardian reader types when the pair warmly hug after a moment of danger, before pushing each other away and remarking “fag”.

Despite these fairly minor issues, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure can’t help but bring a smile to your face. Some great Blu Ray extras include an episode of the Bill and Ted cartoon show, with characters voiced by the principal actors from the feature, as well as interviews with the pair’s creators Chris Matheson and Ed Soloman, the original duo.

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