Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1988)
Director: Stephen Herek
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Bill (Winter) and Ted (Reeves) are cool dudes, but to their teacher, they're high school no-hopers. They fantasise about forming a rock band called 'Wyld Stallyns'; one day they'll pull themselves together and learn how to play guitar. Unless he achieves the seemingly impossible and passes a history presentation, Ted will be shipped off to military school; end of friendship! A figure from the future (Carlin) appears in the nick of time, providing a time-travelling phone booth. The two jump in and out of different epochs, collecting historical figures (from Socrates to Billy the Kid) and confronting them with West Coast culture. This is extremely silly, good natured, superficial stuff; a lot depends on whether you take to Bill and Ted's unique lingo (which contorts surfers' expressions) and their gormless behaviour. The funniest scenes involve Napoleon (Camilleri) adrift in Southern California: pompous and power-hungry, he devours the menu in an ice-cream parlour and hogs the rides in a waterslide park.Author: CM
Cast & crew
Director: Stephen Herek
Producer: Scott Kroopf, Michael S Murphey, Joel Soisson
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Terry Camilleri, Bernie Casey, Dan Shor, Robert V Barron full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 89 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.

What do you think?
Post your review now