Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 28-March-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

I have always liked the question, "If you could invite anybody who has ever lived to your dinner table, whom would you choose?" Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure smacks of such a smorgasbord, with corn dogs and Cheez Whiz as the main course. This teen-oriented comedy throws Napoleon Bonaparte into an ice cream parlor and Ludwig van Beethoven into a store full of electronic keyboards just to see what happens. Thanks to the good nature of the protagonists, what happens is a lot of fun.

Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are extremely likable So-Cal nitwits who are about to flunk their high school history class. This is a major crisis because it means Ted will be sent to a military academy and their fledgling rock band will effectively meet its end. (Plus, being parted from your best friend is totally bogus!) Luckily, the guys have a fairy godfather of sorts, an emissary from the future (George Carlin) who brings them a phone booth that can move through time. With a single night to come up with something A-plus-worthy, they zip around to different centuries collecting famous dudes like grandmas collect Beanie Babies. They even learn a bit about history during their adventure, like how Marco Polo is not just a water sport.

Not only are Bill and Ted super congenial, but the historical figures they cram into the phone booth seem to be too. Despite not speaking a common language they all take their abduction in stride. (And why not? They do get to go to the mall.) A touching friendship blooms between Socrates and Billy the Kid, and though Genghis Khan has a tendency towards unruliness, the guys manage him with the promise of Twinkies. Sigmund Freud analyzes Ted's strained relationship with his father, and Abraham Lincoln brings a level-headed cool to any situation. Joan of Arc is the most aloof, pursuing her religious and martial obsessions, which leaves two giggling medieval princesses to fill the roles of romantic interest.

Unlike the characters in Time Cop, the first movie in this month's time-travel series, Bill and Ted have no problem coexisting with separate temporal versions of themselves; in fact, their experience shows how it's good to have you watching your own back. This part reminded me of nifty dreams in which I need only think of something to make it come true. In Bill and Ted's case, they think of something and it immediately comes true because they will come back from the future and set it up that way! (That's enough to confuse even non-nitwits, but it makes sense within the context of this movie.) Of course all the time-hopping serves the ultimate goal of acing their history presentation in front of the whole school. With their new friends behind them, how could they fail? Excellent!

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