Okay, it was either this film or Encino Man, which I am still contemplating a review of. During the eighties, there was a lot of science-fiction films that were specifically targeted to teenage audiences, and they had teenagers as the main characters. I think this was a sort of throwback to the films of Steven Spielberg, who succeeded in mixing the mundane with the fantastic with such films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and Back to the Future. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure isn’t as good as those films, but it least it isn’t Weird Science, Real Genius, or My Science Project. I might get around to reviewing those films someday.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure has a plot involving time travel, which is a separate genre of speculative fiction that I believe has been done to death, such was the case with Looper, which is essentially The Terminator from the Terminator’s POV. Occasionally, someone will take an interesting take on it, and Bill and Ted was that movie in 1988, one year before Back to the Future II was released.

Bill and Ted are two teenagers who live in San Dimas, California, which I am surprised is a real place. They are stereotypical heavy metal-loving dudes that are dumb, and they are failing history. They are also attempting to be musicians, and in the future, their band, Wyld Stallions, will somehow bring peace and understanding to Earth. Their failing of history class will apparently lead Ted to military school, and their separation will negate this utopian future. Of course, one has to ask how this wonderful future ever came about in the first place, but that is one of those time-travel complications that abound in movies like these.

Bill and Ted can pass their history only if their final report is A + material, so Rufus, who is from the future, is sent back through time to help them. Rufus gives them a phone booth that has the ability to travel through time. Think of it as the TARDIS from Doctor Who, but it is not bigger on the inside. You’d have to watch Doctor Who to get that reference.

Anyway, most of the film is Bill and Ted going throughout various time periods and snatching important figures from history like Billy the Kid, Napoleon, Socrates, Joan of Arc, Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Genghis Khan, and Abraham Lincoln, most of them against their will. Since their final report assignment is to figure out what historical figures would think about present day, this is actually relevant.

Personally, I think this film, designed for dumb humor, is still a work of genius. There is a hysterical scene where the boys realize that time travel can essentially allow you to do anything as lost keys can appear wherever you want, as long as you do it later. However, who knows what happens if you don’t do it later. I realize that won’t make sense, but just see the movie.

The film seems to be asking why certain people stand out in history more than others, and it doesn’t have any answers. Maybe two idiots like Bill and Ted will bring about peace on Earth. It makes just as much sense as those historical figures bringing about the changes that they did in their lifetime and beyond, in spite of their frazzled beginnings.

As an added bonus, I actually have the entire film as an embedded YouTube video after the jump, in case you haven’t seen it. Usually these full movies don’t appear on YouTube long, so watch it quickly if you haven’t yet.