Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure movie review

Having not watched the films in awhile, I decided to have a double-feature and watch the two Bill and Ted movies back-to-back, and it was quite the experience. Below is a review of the first film: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

I was pleasantly surprised as to just how well the first film holds up. It's hard to think of Excellent Adventure as a hallmark of cinema, but it is indeed a masterpiece of what it's going for - it's competently directed, creatively written, and joyously acted, not to mention there's so much energy and just an all-around positive vibe throughout the film that you can't help but not like it.

The film's time travel elements follow their own logic, which, while at times can have elements of deus-ex-machina (e.g. Bill saying they'll do something in the future to go back into the past to affect the present), works well, to the point that you really don't care about how absurd it is (see the previous example). Granted, there is a general lack of concern by the two leads about the implications of time travel (they do comment at one point to Billy the Kid that he's handling time-travel incredibly well), but, again, there's just such energy and whimsy that it doesn't matter.

It aids the film's enjoyment that the two titular heroes are such well-intentioned bone-heads with a startlingly intelligent vocabulary (think of The Dude from The Big Lebowski and how he mimics other's lines, and I'm sure that's what these two have done). It's inclusion of the early 90s California surfer-ditz stereotype may, on the surface, date the film, but the time travel elements counteract that, as the focus is really on the characters and not the time.

Speaking of the other characters, the film has a great cast of supporting characters, from Socrates and the previously mentioned Billy the Kid, to Bill and Ted's parents, to the school teachers; everyone does a solid job and adds to the grand scheme of things.

Of course, these great characters wouldn't have been possible without the great writing done by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. The two crafted a highly creative and entertaining film that stands the test of time and repeat viewings (I immediately wanted to watch it again when I finished it). Not to mention the many, many, many fabulous lines.

Music selection was another very enjoyable aspect of the film, right from the start of the film with Big Pig's "I Can't Break Away" (which sounds a bit like John Carpenter's "They Live" score, which is a very good thing) to the closing "Two Heads are Better Than One" performed by Power Tool. Quality music throughout the film.

While Excellent Adventure would never get nominated for any Oscars, it definitely deserves props for several categories: the originality of the script, and costumes (this is a time travel movie, after all, with upwards of a dozen different period set pieces). The crew who worked on the various costumes easily deserve some recognition for pulling off all of the different eras so smoothly, even if the costumes are relatively generic/stereotypical of the times.

If you've never seen Excellent Adventure before, you owe it to yourself to watch such a highly engaging, entertaining, and overall memorable film that, while it's inclusion in the pantheon of higher films may be overlooked, did have some influence over stoner comedies and is just a solid source of creativity and refreshment. If you have seen EA before, then perhaps it's about time to take a refresher course.

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!