Review of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) by Jesse O — 13 Sep 2014

I was clearly in the mood for something goofy and silly when I picked this one. It's impressive to see how utterly expressive Keanu Reeves actually was in this movie. Perhaps expressive isn't really even the right term to describe it, but he put in a lot more effort into this role, one that doesn't really require him to do much anyway, in comparison to some of his later roles.

I like Keanu a lot actually, but there's no denying that he's not a particularly good actor. Perhaps being a goofball, which is what both Bill and Ted are, just came more naturally to him than other roles.

Maybe that's just me. His delivery is still wooden, but there's a little more life behind his performance. This movie definitely had a bit of a rough start, but it eventually settled down into a silly and fun way to spend 90 minutes.

I'm not gonna say this film is the best time travel film that is out there, hell there were better time travel movies released in the same decade, Back to the Future, as if you hadn't guessed that already.

But there's a certain effort and cleverness about the time travel aspect that adds something to the film. I can't explain what that something else, but it makes it more than just your average teen comedy.

It also has a pretty positive message all things considered about, essentially, being kind to each other. Of course this message is delivered in the most 80s way possible with the phrase 'Be excellent to each other and party on dudes' being the big point of emphasis of this theme.

Wouldn't surprise me if some form of hippies wrote and directed this movie. Some movies will have this same type of message shoehorned into a film full of negative gender, or racial, stereotypes and mean spirited jokes.

See Grown Ups 2, or any Sandler movie for that matter. This film, as far as I can tell, while dealing in stereotypes for the most part, it doesn't do so in a negative way whatsoever. At least I don't think it does.

Perhaps I'm wrong about that. I mean, really, this is exactly what a goofy teen comedy about time travel from the 80s would look like. I don't count BTTF in that list because there's so much more going on there than just goofy time travel teen comedy.

It's silly and it's fun and that's really all it needed to be. Don't expect to be impressed by this film's experimental artistry or examination of the human condition. It's a film about two goofy idiots travelling through time in order to ace their oral report, it's not Citizen Kane.