Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure Review

Most okay! That’s essentially what Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure can be summarised as. The late 1980s comedy starring Keanu Reeves and the other one has received a new breath of life given that a third piece of the now trilogy is set to release this summer. It just goes to show the cultural impact and how nostalgia can keep a product alive and kicking for near enough forty years. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure isn’t deep coated in nostalgia for me, but I can always appreciate a light comedy from the 1980s, the genre was full of them. It’s no surprise that the film managed to wriggle into the soft spot I have for the genre, but I question its longevity.  

Stephen Herek directs us through the best-known film of his career, where we follow Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) as they set off on an epic journey through time in an attempt to pass their history exam. It’s that ever so fun and fluffy 80s cheesy charm that you get with a lot of comedies from this era, and I was fully on board for the ride. The short and sweet running time is made so much more enjoyable by the affable chemistry between our two leading characters. Winter and Reeves have some excellent chemistry (forgive the pun), and it more or less carries the film through its slower, less engaged scenes. 

Drifting in and out of history will certainly have its high and low points, and the rushed nature of the film for the sake of fourth wall breaks or at the time smart special effects somewhat overtakes a script that would’ve benefited heavily from exploring the past in chunks that weren’t only a few minutes long. Interactions with Socrates, Sigmund Freud and Abraham Lincoln are by far the highlights of the historical figures Bill and Ted kidnap in their phone box given to them by George Carlin. 

It’s a film where its premise is dumb enough to be hilarious, but its script and actors are smart enough to drag the film away from its completely hilarious potential. Maybe it’s for the best though, in my mind, the way I’d have wanted this film to go, Bill and Ted would both be stuck watching the birth of Christ or the fall of the Berlin wall where they would take on the real villain of the piece, David Hasselhoff. Aside from the lack of variety when it comes to the historical scenes, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure can pride itself on a most excellent sense of humour. Some of the jokes throughout are absolutely superb because of how bizarre they are. Sketch show levels of humour with Sigmund Freud and Keanu Reeves, what more could you ask for? 

Perhaps Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure deserves higher praise, but I’m certainly not the person to do that. Although funny at times, the film lacks the narrative strength or intrigue to keep me from drifting away, my interest dipping up and down rather sporadically. It’s a fine film, one that I don’t think will stick with me for all that long. As far as Reeves’ films go, this is one of the far stronger pieces of his filmography. Everyone involved is having a good time, and so are the fans of this film. They can party on for as long as they like as far as I’m concerned.