Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)

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.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Director: Stephen Herek

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Hal Landon Jr.

Have I Seen it Before: Uhhh… Yeah. I first became interested in my wife because she randomly mentioned both this film and Back to the Future (1985) in a conversation. It lives in me.

Did I Like It: I remember my fourth grade teacher saying at one point that both this movie and the characters within it were among the dumbest she had ever seen. That statement stuck with me beyond anything else that particular educator said (including her name, now that I think about it) is both an indictment of anything that happened at an institute named after Robert E. Lee, and the fact that even at the age of 10 I so vehemently disagreed with this assessment so immediately.

The movie is not stupid. Any movie that pins a button on the uniform of Napoleon Bonaparte (Terry Camilleri) for eating ice cream and then makes him an absolute fiend for water slides is not stupid. I could keep going on this list of reasons the film itself is not stupid, when you should really go watch the film and experience it for yourself.

But Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Reeves) are not dumb, either. They are exceptionally bright, sort of ridiculously so, but incomplete as people. They are ignorant, but not willfully ignorant. Therein lies their charm. They learn an exceptionally large amounts of information about history in 90 minutes of runtime.

Now, there is a moment in the film that plays so sourly that one is immediately tempted to think the whole movie suffers. After thinking that Ted had died at the hand of one of their antagonists in Medieval England, the members of Wyld Stallyns are reunited and embrace. Horrified, they immiedately push away from one another and call each other fags. 

Now, unlike Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) which went out of its way to predicate its entire plot on each and every character being suddenly and irreparably transphobic, this moment may not age well, but it does feel like two teenage boys of the 1980s would probably have internalize this precise measure of homophobic toxic masculinity. This alone makes their fate as the saviors of all human kind far harder to swallow then any amateurish guitar riff they might play.

They do get better, as Rufus says. We’ll all see soon enough, but even the course of this excellent adventure they have made quantum leaps forward in that regard.