As always, Spoiler Alert.
Some movies, you have to see at just the right time in your life for them to work.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which came out in 1989, and the 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, were two movies I always placed firmly in that category in my head. It’s the main reason I’d never seen them. The movies, about two lovable slackers, were clearly geared towards a teenage demographic, and since I didn’t see them when I was a teenager myself, I figured it was simply a missed opportunity.
It wasn’t even a missed opportunity that I regretted. There are a tonne of movies I’ve not seen, after all, and these were just two more to add to the list. I never expected them to get crossed off of that list. Not even for Keanu Reeves, one of a small number of actors whose movies I will watch specifically because they’re in them.
Cue my friend M.
M’s one of my movie buddies. She knows I enjoy Reeves’ work, and was surprised to learn I’d never seen either of the Bill & Ted movies. Not long after, when she came over for a visit, she brought me Bill & Ted’s Excellent Double Feature. (This would be sometime after the third movie was announced, but before it was released.) She’d come across it while shopping and thought I might like to fill in Reeves’ back catalogue.
It was the sweetest thing, but I admit, it did take me a while to actually watch them. I’ve tried going back to old movies that people in my generation adore and never cared for any of them, so I didn’t hold out much hope for these. It wasn’t, I assumed, the right time in my life. Or, as I like to put it, “I’m not 12 years old anymore.”
Surprisingly, though, I think this was a better time for me to watch the Bill & Ted movies than when I was 12 years old. Why? Because I was a really uptight child, and I would have hated both Bill and Ted. No amount of lovableness could have countered my judgement of their slacker nature. But I’m much more relaxed now, so even though I still don’t like the lovable slacker trope, I can see past it.
While most of the humour, like Death getting a wedgie in the clip above, is too juvenile for my tastes, it was interesting to catch old pop-culture stuff I’d forgotten. It was wonderful to see George Carlin. And I enjoyed the many heavy metal references, something there’s no way in hell 12-year-old me would have caught.
Plus, unlike most lovable slackers, Bill and Ted are actually kinda lovable. It’s a testament to both Reeves’ and Alex Winter’s acting ability that they manage to play a couple of inherently annoying characters and have them be not at all annoying. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to start saying things are bogus or most excellent, or playing air guitar, but I can see why they caught on.
I think perhaps the biggest surprise for me, though, was the takeaway message – mainly because I didn’t expect there to be one. But when you get right down to it, clueless as they may be, Bill and Ted’s general philosophy in life is a good one. We should, indeed, “Be excellent to each other.”
To see other posts in my venture to watch my movie collection in alphabetical(ish) order, click here.
The View From the Handbasket 