Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
Retro Review #77: "Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K." –Ted
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) — “Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.” –Ted
+ Feature film, 1h 30m
A-^
Family Suitability
+ ✅1️⃣ Mostly OK for teens and adults. (Grades 10+, ⚠️ Might be considered inappropriate for sensitive teens and adults.) | PGa
Alignment with Judeo-Christian Values
+ ⚠️0️⃣ Tolerable (Not in alignment with Judeo-Christian values, but focuses more on entertaining, not on advocating its viewpoint or pushing an agenda.)
+ 1️⃣/3 films in Bill & Ted series ⭐
Grade: A-^ (8.0) / HOF: 15
EQ 👍A- | 📖A- 👥A- 📽️A 🎼A
DW 😎9.7 | 🌚9 🌝11
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R ☮️n/a ◀️n/a ▶️n/a 🛐n/a
Be excellent to each other.
–BillParty on, dudes!
–Ted
The entire ethos of the 1989 movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is perfectly summarized in the two lines above directly quoted from the film. So it’s no surprise that the movie is a well-meaning fun adventure, that occasionally misses the mark, but never gets too much out of hand.
Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan are a couple of high school slackers from San Dimas, California, dreaming of becoming rock stars who have formed a band in their garage, but don’t even own guitars yet. Their future is threatened when they are both about to fail their History class. As they contemplate their fate while visiting the Circle-K convenience store, a visitor from their future appears with an offer to help. Supplied with a time machine in the form of a phone booth, all our heroes must do is go back in time, and kidnap a few historical figures, then bring them back to tell their class what those historical figures think of the modern world of San Dimas.
Now this movie spawned a couple of spin-off TV series, some comic books, video games, and theme park attractions, not to mention two theatrical sequels, the latest released just a few years back in 2020. So obviously it was a big success at the time, right? Well, maybe not everywhere—critical opinions were mixed—but in some circles…
In 1989, I lived in Southern California, not all that far from San Dimas. I was in my late 20s, and I was involved in a singles group at my church, where I was the groups unofficial emcee. I was often asked to introduce speakers or handle announcements to the group. The quick and easy method I used was to create Top Ten lists modeled after the humor of Late Night with David Letterman. And whenever they could talk me into it, I would write and perform comedy sketches, sometimes on my own, and sometimes with help from enlisted friends.
It just so happened that one of those friends, was named Ted. Really. He was the groups unofficial worship leader. Played a bass electric guitar. (I’m getting to the point here.) The movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was so very big in this So Cal peer group of mine, that Rick & Ted’s excellent parody of the film was one of our biggest sketch successes. Repeated sequels were requested and delivered such that it became a sketch series that lasted months, probably well into the home video release of the movie on which it was based.
Now if you were to check the imdb listing for this film, it would tell you that Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure can be included in the Romance and also the Music genres. Don’t buy that. There’s a little bit of romance in the film and the guys want to form a band, so it’s about music a little. But neither category represents a genre this film fits into well. Oddly the imdb listing leaves out the Historical genre, but it correctly includes the Teen Adventure, Buddy Comedy, and Science Fiction: Time Travel genres.
So you should expect a fun and funny film. There’s a lot of spoofing of time travel tropes, and historical laughs abound, especially in the first half to two-thirds of the movie. Writers Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon understand the same concept used frequently and well by the Coen brothers in movies such as Raising Arizona, namely that dumb people who wax eloquently with large vocabularies they haven’t quite mastered are hilarious.
Raising Arizona (1987)
Raising Arizona (1987) — The Coen brothers' second film and first masterpiece.
As much as I love Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I have to admit that it trails off for awhile in the late middle portion. It descends into some silliness that just isn’t very funny for a bit. Historical figures in San Dimas just didn’t work as well for me as San Dimas figures in history. Perhaps you will see it differently, but I think for me it was due mostly to the great performances by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in the title roles as the San Dimas travelers. Reeves went on to super-stardom later. Winter, not so much, but he was great here.
My least favorite character in the film was Napoleon. The characterization and jokes around him just weren’t funny to me. There’s one scene where he unleashes a stream of French obscenities, but the repeated word “s**t” is displayed in English using subtitles. That’s the content parents would probably object to more than any other, so use VidAngel dot com if you want to screen it out. Without that one scene instead of rating the film’s Family Suitability as “✅1️⃣ Mostly OK for teens and adults. (Grades 10+)”, I would have rated it as “✅2️⃣ OK for teens and adults. (Grades 7+).”
I must say that it is ironic that the visitor from the future, Rufus, is played by the iconic stand-up comedian George Carlin, and doesn’t use a single dirty word. Carlin was known in large part for his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine. But in this film his language is squeaky clean. The little bits of crude language in the movie come from elsewhere.
Despite the slow parts in the late middle, the film ends strong with some good time travel spoof-plotting and a feel-good finale. If you have never seen this film, it’s a fun way to remember the 1980s if you lived through them, or experience them for the first time if they were before your time. You will learn a lot more about the 1980s from this film than you do about any of the other history thinly addressed in the movie! But that’s OK. It’s all in good fun. You can probably learn more about history from reading a book. Unless you happen to have a phone booth time machine.
Onwards!
+ last viewed (3) 2025-07-25, HDX7, 2.39, 2M
+ first viewed 1989, ThX, 2.39, 2
+ ⏳🛹🪐♾️🛡️🥸😛
Family Suitability Detail
+ ✅1️⃣ Mostly OK for teens and adults. (Grades 10+, ⚠️ Might be considered inappropriate for sensitive teens and adults.) | PGa
+ 😡+2 😵💫+2 🤬-0^ 🤭+2 🫣+2
Judeo-Christian Values Detail
+ ⚠️0️⃣ Tolerable (Not in alignment with Judeo-Christian values, but focuses more on entertaining, not on advocating its viewpoint or pushing an agenda.)
+ ✝️ +0 ➕❤️❤️❤️ ➖(😍🗿👙🚬🍺)
+ ✡️ -0 ➕(🤍) ➖(😍🗿🤬)
+ 🗽 -0 ➖(😍🗿)
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Aww, wish you had recorded some of Rick and Ted’s! Bet they were Most Excellent.