Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
| Year: | 1989 |
| Director: | Stephen Herek |
| Cast: | Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Bernie Casey |
The late eighties saw the rise of a string of extremely marketable comedies that were the gestating genre of the teen stoner comedy still popular today in films like Harold & Kumar and Dude, Where's My Car?.
And I stress 'marketable', not good. At the time of their release, newspaper articles invariably came with little breakout boxes of the lingo used in the film. They either extrapolated (far beyond reality) or outright invented a subculture with which to poke fun at or using in the film.
And Bill and Ted was among the first. It launched Keanu Reeves' fledgling career (after his memorable turn playing essentially the same character in Parenthood) and featured Winter as Bill, one of the vampire kids from The Lost Boys whose career subsequently went nowhere.
Two dudes in the California community of San Dimas are flunking history badly. If they do, Ted's paramilitary-style cop father is sending him to military school in Alaska to straighten him out.
But there's a problem. The band the guys are going to hit the big time with (when they learn to play guitar), Wyld Stallyn, are going to produce music that will inspire the world to embrace brotherhood, end war and hunger, and lower mini golf scores considerably.
The powers that be send an emissary from the future, Rufus (Carlin), to give the boys the key to the future - a phone booth that can travel the circuits of time and take them anywhere, any point in history.
Collecting historical figures From Joan of Arc, Beethoven and Genghis Khan to Billy the Kid, Socrates and Sigmund Freud, they bring them back to modern day San Dimas to show them around and get their impression of late 20th century life (the subject of the history report they can't fail).
Pretty dated now, but funny enough. No stretch for anyone involved (including the scriptwriter), but it assumed a barely deserved place in movie lore.
And I stress 'marketable', not good. At the time of their release, newspaper articles invariably came with little breakout boxes of the lingo used in the film. They either extrapolated (far beyond reality) or outright invented a subculture with which to poke fun at or using in the film.
And Bill and Ted was among the first. It launched Keanu Reeves' fledgling career (after his memorable turn playing essentially the same character in Parenthood) and featured Winter as Bill, one of the vampire kids from The Lost Boys whose career subsequently went nowhere.
Two dudes in the California community of San Dimas are flunking history badly. If they do, Ted's paramilitary-style cop father is sending him to military school in Alaska to straighten him out.
But there's a problem. The band the guys are going to hit the big time with (when they learn to play guitar), Wyld Stallyn, are going to produce music that will inspire the world to embrace brotherhood, end war and hunger, and lower mini golf scores considerably.
The powers that be send an emissary from the future, Rufus (Carlin), to give the boys the key to the future - a phone booth that can travel the circuits of time and take them anywhere, any point in history.
Collecting historical figures From Joan of Arc, Beethoven and Genghis Khan to Billy the Kid, Socrates and Sigmund Freud, they bring them back to modern day San Dimas to show them around and get their impression of late 20th century life (the subject of the history report they can't fail).
Pretty dated now, but funny enough. No stretch for anyone involved (including the scriptwriter), but it assumed a barely deserved place in movie lore.