So I’ve finished watching the Bill and Ted movies–including the new one–and here are my honest opinions on each of them…
PARTY ON DUDES!
…but seriously, here are the reviews:
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure:
This movie is spectacular. It’s very funny, but it’s the type of humor that makes you laugh at how stupid and illogical it is. That’s not a bad thing: every now and then, you need a movie that will make you laugh, especially in this time and age.
The basic plot of the first movie is that in the future, a time traveler (played by George Carlin) decides to time travel in the past in a time machine that looks like a telephone booth, in order to help Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) pass a history exam, because if they don’t pass, then Ted’s dad will send him to military school, which will split up their band (Wyld Stallyns), and if the band doesn’t exist, it will not bring Peace and Harmony to the world in the future. So the time traveler leaves his time machine for them, and they use it to go back to different eras and bring back historical future figures with them, namely Billy the Kid, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abe Lincoln, Joan of Arc, and Sigmund Freud. They bring back Napoleon first, and Ted asks his ten-year-old brother to watch an eye on Napoleon, but Napoleon goes off on his own, gets ice cream, and then he ends up at a water park that’s called Waterloo, which he surprisingly enjoys. The movie ends with Rufus (the time traveler) bringing a couple of girls from medieval England to the present so Bill and Ted have prom dates.
So to wrap this up, this is the type of movie where you have to turn off your brain for an hour and 40 minutes, but trust me, that kind of movie is good to watch in these dark times. I give this movie an A+.
Bill and Ted’s Bogus Adventure:
This is my least favorite Bill and Ted movie. First off, this barely has anything to do with time travel. The whole plot is that evil robot copies of Bill and Ted are sent back to the past by a bad guy who wants to rewrite history by killing the duo. The robots do kill Bill and Ted, and so for the majority of the movie, they’re trying to find a way out of Hell to defeat the evil robots.
As it turns out, the way to get out of Hell is to beat Death at a game (they play Battleship, Clue, and Twister). If that plot sounds kind of generic to you, then you’re not going to like it. Also, the boys have started dating those two girls from England who came to the present at the end of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I will admit I had three or two chuckles from this movie but that’s not much. I give it a D+.
Bill and Ted Face the Music:
This is the latest installment in the Bill and Ted. Bill and Ted are now adults, and they have their own daughters–Bill’s daughter Theodore (played by Samara Weaving) and Ted’s daughter Billie (played by Brigette Lundy-Paine)–and yes, they really did name their daughters after each other (Theodore should probably be Theodora). Theodore and Billy are pretty much Bill and Ted 2.0: they both like music, like they’re both kooky and weird, and they’re both unemployed 24 year olds still living in their families house just like their dads were in the first 2 movies. Bill and Ted are still played by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter and they’re still funny. While Ted’s dad (who was in the first two movies) appears again, Rufus does not reprise his role because George Carlin is dead, though there’s a little cameo in this movie that’s a nice homage to him.
Anyway, the plot of Bill and Ted Face the Music is that the boys have to create a song that is spectacular and will unite the world, and if they don’t the world as they know it will be destroyed, so there’s a time limit. Since they can’t create the song, they decide to cheat and go to different versions of themselves in the future and try to get the song from them. It turns out that all the future versions of themselves they encounter are miserable. Then there are a couple of subplots, one where Billy and Theodore time travel and bring back historical singers to help perform Bill and Ted’s song, and one where Bill, Ted, and their wives (those girls from the first movie) are in marriage counseling because it feels like the boys are more attached to each other.
The first part of the movie is very funny, but as it goes on, the humor lessens. I’m not going to give away too much, but there’s a character named Dennis Caleb McCoy, and he is pretty funny. Hell and Death come back too, but they don’t appear until late in the film. I feel it’s safe to say that it’s a nice wrap up and send off. My only complaint is that the ending is very abrupt, almost as if they forgot to record the ending. My rating for Bill and Ted Face the Music is a B.
I still highly recommend you check this series out. It’s funny because you’re not supposed to take it seriously, and that’s perfectly fine. Next Monday, I’ll be doing a review on Mulan, so I’ll see you then.