Director: Pete Hewitt
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, William Sadler, George Carlin
Have I Seen It Before?: Oh, without a doubt. Come to think of it, the novelization for the film may have been the first book not exclusively marketed for children that I ever read… Not sure why I chose that moment to admit that.
Did I like it?: The filmmakers and cast themselves have decided that this was one-half of a very clever film, and another half of a film that had no idea what to do with itself other than attach itself to a delirium-fueled inside joke (Station!) between the writers.
Maybe I just saw the film for the first time when I was seven, that golden age when films are great and any kind of critical filter is a thing of diminished older beings. And when I came back to the film as I got older, I could only appreciate it more. Convention wisdom would have dictated another trip through time, hitting the exact same notes as the original Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). One need only look to the sequels to Back to the Future (1985). To listen to the commentary on the Blu Ray, there was talk of having Bill and Ted travel through the realm of fiction to pass a troublesome literature class, which is different enough, but I am glad they avoided, for <purely selfish reasons.>
Instead, the sequel to Excellent Adventure turns out to be a fairly effective remake of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957). What a demented, inspired choice. Honestly, between this and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) we got some truly next-level comedy sequels in the early 1990s.
Complaints are scant and largely cosmetic. I only noticed on this screening that the heroes embedded homophobia is still on display (although the movie doesn’t stop all together to wallow in such a moment) and there is far too little George Carlin in the film to truly satisfy, especially since we’re not going to get him in a film any time soon. On an odd note, I’m now often struck by my theory as to how much this film might have inspired some of the design choices eighteen years later in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek (2009). The lecture auditorium at Bill & Ted University so starkly resembles the bridge of the Enterprise from that film, whereas the brief glimpse of the lair of De Nomolos (Joss Ackland, who legend tells hated being in the movie as much as the character himself hated living the Stallyns’ future) looks like the clockwork interior of the Narada. Even the clothes worn by Rufus (Carlin) and his attempts to chase the villains back in time bring to mind Spock in that film.