The Keanu Reeves Project: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE - "Ted" Theodore Logan

I'm taking this Keanu Reeves Project pretty goddamn seriously so I really am watching every single movie he's in no matter how small the part nor how many times I might have already seen it (although I am planning on skipping over voiceover work like Toy Story 4, Deep Web and his one or two lines in the Key & Peele movie Keanu), which brings me to the teen comedy classic, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

My very first memory of Bill and Ted wasn't a memory of the movie at all, but of my cousin's recounting of it after he'd gone to see it with his friends.  My family was visiting my aunt in New York and my cousin came back from the theater and told us he'd just watched the funniest movie he'd ever seen.  He told me about the part where Bill and Ted show up in Austria during Napoleon's invasion and did his best impression, "We're in the middle of a war, dude!"  Clearly, eight year old me had to see this movie.

A few weeks later, I convinced my mother to take me and my friend David to go see it.  We arrived late, probably because my mother couldn't care at all about seeing a movie about two idiots traveling through time, and showed up right when Mr. Ryan, their history teacher, asks who Joan of Arc was.  The answer of course - "Noah's wife."

I immediately fell in love.

Over the last 31 years, I have probably seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure from start to finish at least 200 times and that is probably an underestimate.  When I was in elementary school, my best friend Michelle and I must have watched it together nearly every other weekend for a year straight, and even saw the sequel together in the theater.  We used to record "radio shows" together on her tape recorder (essentially a ten year old's version of a podcast in 1990) that we called "Bill and Gwen's Excellent Adventures," because Gwen was the female equivalent to Ted apparently.  I don't know if it's correlated or not, but Michelle grew up (as children tend to do), had a baby girl and named her Gwen.

Gods among men

During 8th and 9th grade, my friend Vincent and I probably watched it together at least once a month and reached a point where we were able to recite just about the entire movie by heart, much to the annoyance of our other friends.

As I got older, Bill and Ted became my go to movie whenever I was bored, depressed, drunk, or had nothing else to do.  It was the second or third DVD I ever purchased (the first, for some inexplicable reason was the movie Joy Ride) and there were many nights spent after a night out drinking where I'd ome home to relax and I'd throw on B & T before going to bed.

I keep a Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure poster in my den (Bogus Journey is in storage), my cats are named Bill and Ted, and I often use the screen name 'YesWayTed' for several online games.  I've got a variety of B & T paraphernalia around the house like my Ted action figure (that can't be on display because the cat version of Ted is a monster), a Ted throw pillow, and both of my Bill and Ted Funko Pops.

Bill sold separately

Basically, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a perfect movie.  Besides the fact that it's timelessly funny (no pun intended), both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter couldn't have been better fits for their roles, even if they initially auditioned for the opposite ones.  Their on screen chemistry is magnificent and even the supporting cast makes the most with their limited lines.  Oh, and even the absolute legend George Carlin is in it!  Excellent!

In fact, if there's anything "wrong" about the movie it's that Bill and Ted, seemingly a pair of teenage stoners, are never seen smoking or even talking about weed.  Now, I don't know if that was a choice to keep the movie with a PG rating or not, but with a few tweaks it could objectively be the best stoner comedy of all time.

That said, it's not a stoner comedy.  It's simply a movie about two best friends traveling through time to pass their English exam so they aren't split up, with Ted's dad sending him off to military school in Alaska.  Bogus!  Why is this important?  Because their band, Wyld Stallyns, eventually make music that brings about world peace and a utopian society where the air is clean, the water is clean and even the dirt, it's clean!  Still unclear about the coal.

Cat versions of Bill (right) and Ted (left).  Just as stupid as the actual pair but far bigger assholes.

Despite the fact that I have seen this movie hundreds of times, there are still lines that make me laugh nearly every single time, including on my most recent watch for this project, such as:

"And I am the Duke of Ted!"

"Dust.  Wind.  Dude!"

Nearly anything Napoleon does.  

As part of my mission to indoctrinate my ten year old nephew with the movies I grew up with, I recently watched both Bill and Ted movies with him and it filled me with joy that he actually enjoyed them both, particularly when Genghis Khan goes apeshit in a sporting goods store.

I've been reading rumors and discussions about Bill and Ted 3 for what feels like forever and I can't believe it's finally, actually been filmed and being released this summer.  In fact, if there's one thing that REALLY makes me anxious about the ongoing pandemic (you know, aside from losing my job and feeling completely helpless in the face of government incompetence on a scale never seen before) it's that the movie will be postponed as many others have already and I'll have to wait another year or more for it to come out.  My hopes and expectations are exceedingly low - most sequels that come out more than a four or five years after the previous film are almost always terrible, and Bogus Journey was released in 1991...

That said, I find it hard to believe that Keanu Reeves, who is now a megastar that he certainly wasn't in 1991, would sign up to do the new movie if he wasn't incredibly confident in it.  I'm not saying Keanu doesn't make bad movies (I'm looking at you Devil's Advocate and what I hear is Replicas), but I am saying I find it hard to believe he would desecrate the legend of Bill and Ted unless he thought it was going to be, well, excellent.

A few other side notes - 

*I love that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter became lifelong friends after making this movie together.  While Keanu went on to have an extensive careers as a leading man, Alex Winter has more or less been forgotten despite the fact that he's gone on to produce and direct a number of movies including the 2015 documentary "Deep Web' about the controversial/illegal website, The Silk Road (with narration by none other than Keanu).

*The soundtrack to the movie is also spectacular and yes, I also owned it on cassette tape when I was a kid and listened to it non-stop.

*It has always bothered me that Beethoven is arrested during the mall montage.  I'd think the store manager would be ecstatic that someone was driving so much foot traffic to his store and Beethoven never does anything wrong or illegal.

*Despite being a 30 year old movie, Bill and Ted remains immensely quotable.  From "San Dimas High School Football Rules!" to "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K," it's rare that more than a few days go by where I don't find myself saying a line from Bill and Ted in one context or another.

*Considering I've seen this movie as much as I have, I rarely catch something new on repeated viewings.  But, perhaps because I was watching this time on my computer with headphones on I actually noticed something for the first time: during Bill and Ted's presentation at the end, after Billy the Kid introduces himself, someone in ADR yells "Yeah, and I'm General Custer!"  That made me laugh.

BEST PART: Oh boy, I don't even know.  From a general sense, the on screen chemistry between Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves.  From a scene standpoint, probably the part outside the Circle K, but I mean, don't quote me on this, this movie is perfect.

WORST PART: N/A.

Box Office Mojo Information: $40.5 Million, 31st highest grossing movie of 1989.

Rotten Tomatoes: 79% Critics, 75% Audience.

IMDB: 6.9 (further proving that IMDB ratings are fucking stupid)

My Movie Rating: 10/10.  What, were you not expecting that?  Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure will be a part of me until the day I die and is easily one of my top ten movies of all time.  It's immensely rewatchable and still funny today.  If you're an adult and never seen it, I'm guessing you wouldn't enjoy it now, but show it to your kids and let them have fun with it.

Keanu Rating: 10/10.  I mean, he's perfectly cast as Ted, this was the character he was born to play.

Up next: Parenthood - a movie I've probably seen a dozen times but never in one sitting in linear order.  I wonder if there's anything I've missed....