Time Travel Device: A phone booth!
Time Travel Outcome: Keep Bill and Ted together by helping them pass History.
Coolness Factor: Collecting historical dudes.
Flaws: Would anyone CHOOSE to base a civilization on Bill and Ted? (I'm not saying civilizations have never been based on Bills and Teds; I'm just questioning the mentality that would do it on purpose--though Mike makes a strong argument for why someone would!)
Paradox Featured: Predestination Paradox (the future exists as it is exists because of the act of going back in time; thus your actions fulfill destiny instead of changing or endangering it).
Kate says wow, this movie is stupid.
Okay, it actually isn't as stupid as it seems. But the initial opening "dudes" are a little difficult to get past.
I must have seen this movie at least five times when it first came out (and I never suspected that Keanu Reeves would become an icon in his own right!). It was not, in my youth, quite as initially annoying as I now find it.
However, if you keep watching, the movie holds up surprisingly well. The problem is basic and is set forth in a tidy fashion, using straight-forward explanations. I remember being impressed that the famous dead dudes speak the languages of their places and times--and I still am. (Except fifteenth-century Englishmen and women would, in reality, be fairly incomprehensible to Bill and Ted. I'm not sure I knew that when I was a teen.)
Bill and Ted do get less irritating as the film progresses--and not just because the viewer gets used to "So-crates" and "bodacious." They mature and problem-solve. At the end, Ted even suggests that they actually learn to play guitar before going further with the band!
And their final project is surprisingly good. Even if perceived as a mocking pastiche (which it really is even though Bill and Ted are being serious), it is a clever mocking pastiche. You can't mock what you don't know. I'd give it an A+! (I'm not sure I would pass Bill and Ted if they hadn't passed any other part of the course, but I'd certainly give them an A+ for the final project.)
And there are some excellent parts and lines. The part where Bill and Ted visit the future is oddly touching. I love the Star Wars reference in medieval England. I've always been struck by how well Alex Winter plays being upset over Ted's supposed demise. And I really love the line: "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K."
Oh, and Rufus (George Carlin) is great, of course.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is not a complete waste of your time!
Mike says reviewing Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (a favorite of my childhood) can be a little difficult without a certain goal in mind. It could be reviewed as a commentary on 80's metal culture, a comedy adventure film, or even studied as an early work of Keanu Reeves. In reality, the time travel/sci-fi aspect of the movie is so underplayed that it can be easily overlooked. But, then again, it should be; after all, time travel really isn't what the movie is about.
The simple fact is that the hows and whys of the the time machine are really unimportant to the story--Bill & Ted must overcome their ignorance and aimlessness if they are to achieve their destinies. While the movie contains many stereotypes of 80's comedies and is admittedly a little dated, the true story of Bill & Ted really surpasses the trappings of the 80's sci-fi/comedy film.
As teenagers, the future and the past are two big, mysterious unknowns that every adult seems to know all about. The idea that events transpired before our birth is a hard one to grasp for the teen-aged mind; so too the idea that we can truly shape our futures. While many are told that they have bright futures ahead, few believe it, and many wait for it to come instead of chasing after it.
When first introduced, Bill and Ted are in the here and now of teenage life. The future is in mind, but it is a shiny prize that neither knows how to reach. Likewise, the past is a mystery, something that offers no real value to their dilemma. Ted's father provides a wonderful vision of what awaits them--adulthood as men who are unable (and perhaps unwilling) to remember the dreams of their childhood and who failed to achieve them.
When Rufus arrives with the Booth, rather than save them and hand them their prize, he hands them not only the keys to shape their destiny but a way to meet and learn from historical figures who also actively shaped the futures of themselves and those around them.
By giving Bill and Ted the ultimate responsibility of their fate and future, Rufus empowers the aimless pair, and begins the journey that creates his world. While it it true that this creates a pre-destination paradox (the future must intervene in order for them to exist, so it exists in order to intervene), Rufus really represents the the culmination of Bill and Teds dreams: their music not only comes to be but honestly affects others for the better. Rufus appearing to inspire and empower the duo is really no different than being motivated to see your dreams come true, or being inspired by someone who has chased the same goal (a figurative representative of the future).
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is fun, hilarious, and at times, VERY hokey. But its message is timeless: The future and the past are intertwined, and they touch here in the present. It is our job to look back, look forward, and then figure out where we want to go, and how we're going to get there. And that journey is most certainly an EXCELLENT adventure.
Friday, March 11, 2011
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5 comments:
Great points, Mike! I think your points back my argument that teens today don't have the greatest fictional role models. Those of us influenced by 80's fictional role models were better off!
This is a movie to see once (and who would know that a) Keanu Reeves would make it and b) this was the extent of his acting skill.)
My connection to this film is that I helped load the special effects truck and also drove a noisy rental truck way the heck out to nowhwere to pick up the rigging that would be used to "fly" the phone booth.
Woah, that's harsh Joe!
That's cool about the rigging though!
I do like this film alot, but my review was at least partially tounge in cheek. But I think there is more depth to this film than anyone would guess.
Joe: Didn't you guys do the special effects for Robocop? One of those sci-fi films? I remember the company did accident reconstructions, but I thought I remembered some special effect work on some films (though I didn't know about Bill & Ted!).
Not the same company--the accident reconstruction model was for a place in Arizona. Before then, I was short term contracting at various places in LA. The Robocop thing was a two day contract to light the blue screen and help shoot the doll of Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) falling after Robocop shot him.
One thing to understand about Hollywood is that on large productions, there are often dozens of subcontractors that do just one thing and never get credit. (For example, most screenplays have fixers that never get credit, even if the rewrote the script! There's more than one instance of someone getting an academy award for work they didn't actually do, or for someone to not get one due to arcane rules.)
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