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TV / movies 📺 The 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure' Retrospective Thread

Maister

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I would place Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure in my top 25 movies of all time. It's one of my favorite comedies ever, being in close contention with both 'Airplane!' and 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. It would serve as a breakout role for Keanu Reeves. Co-star Alex Winter (Bill S. Preston Esquire) would go on to have a somewhat less illustrious career. The movie also permanently cemented the California surfer dude character trope into the public consciousness (created by Sean Penn in his role as Jeff Spicoli in 'Fast Times At Ridgemont High'). The movie was over the top fun and never intended to be taken seriously on any level.

How about you, did you laugh out loud when you first saw it? Was it the two actors' comedic timing or the absurdist premise of the script? How would you say this film has aged over the past 36 years? Is the idea of step-mom Missy more cringe nowadays or is the story of Oedipus as timeless as Greek mythology itself? What are your favorite scenes?

Did you know Missy (aka Doctor Amy Stoch) is an academic who holds a PhD in theater history?
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Just good entertainment. Watched a few weeks ago. Don't believe I have watched the third - Bill and Ted Face the Music. I'd put this up with Dumb and Dumber, Ghostbusters, Animal House, Caddyshack, Monty Python and the Hold Grail, and This is Spinal Tap, as movies I can always watch.
 
SlaveToTheGrind said:
Just good entertainment. Watched a few weeks ago. Don't believe I have watched the third - Bill and Ted Face the Music. I'd put this up with Dumb and Dumber, Ghostbusters, Animal House, Caddyshack, Monty Python and the Hold Grail, and This is Spinal Tap, as movies I can always watch.
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I made the mistake of watching the sequel 'Bill & Teds' Bogus Journey' and was sorely disappointed. There were a few amusing moments (challenging Death to a game of Battleship in a nod to Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal) I believe they caught lightning in a bottle with the first one and no one will ever really recapture the magic formula.

Planit said:
Party on Garth
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Yeah, there would probably be no Waynes World without Bill & Ted
 
btrage said:
The SNL Wayne's World comedy skit actually started on SNL the same year Bill & Ted's was released - 1989.
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That sounds about right. It also occurs to me there's some differences between Wayne and Bill & Ted. Wayne drops Kierkegaard references into his discussion whereas Bill & Ted were total asteroids.
 
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is definitely a classic and among my top comedies of all time. I rewatched it last year for the first time in a while and it holds up pretty well. I agree that Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey was. not. good. but the third movie was actually pretty entertaining.

I have fond memories of seeing Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure at the movie theatre when I was 11: We were on spring break and staying at my grandma's house in Sarasota and it was a rainy afternoon and we were looking for something for us all to do. My older sister had already seen the movie a few weeks earlier when it had just came out and she was looking at the movie listings in the paper and saw that it was playing at the dollar theatre in town and wanted to see it again. So my grandma, my parents, my sister, myself, and a second cousin who was about my age and staying at her grandma's a few houses away all piled into the Aerostar and went to the movies and then out to an early dinner. I remember my grandma laughing hysterically throughout the movie and then afterwards her mentioning that she hadn't been into a movie theatre in probably 20 years.
 
One of the funniest bits of dialogue I thought was when the entourage of historic characters is walking through Ted's house and he introduces his "friends" to Missy - I mean Mom. He gives them modified names like 'Dennis Freud' but when he gets to the instantly recognizable Abraham Lincoln he just gives up and lamely adds, "And, uh, Abraham Lincoln." It goes right by Missy anyways.
 
This was the first movie I went to see with just my friend...no parent or older sibling. I, like WSU, was 11 when I saw it in the Summer of 1989.

We. Died. Laughing.

I loved and love the absurdity of the premise and it was just fun in the pursuit of very low, but important stakes for a pair of goofball high school students.

So many great lines and scenes. My favorite is the 'time travel scheme' to help themselves get their historical friends out of the Police Station. Pure delight.

It certainly holds up, but there is only one 'joke' that doesn't hold up between 1989 and 2025. Other than that...excellent!
 
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