Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

(Stephen Herek, USA, 1989)

To all those fine, upstanding citizens who, in the early 1990s, protested the inclusion of popular films, TV series and comic books in the Australian secondary school curriculum: this film will represent your ultimate nightmare.

It is the story of the two rather dim-witted teenagers of the title (played with verve by, respectively, Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) who zip through time in a futuristic phone booth – seeking quick and easy answers to their forthcoming History exam.

And the result? No arc of moral chastisement or Higher Learning for Bill & Ted! They co-opt Freud, Socrates, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Beethoven and Abraham Lincoln (all live in the flesh) for their spectacular pedagogical presentation – and duly conclude that the world’s entire history of event and insight can be summed up in a single, grotty slogan: “Party on, dudes!”

And who can disagree with that? This a fast, inventive, uproarious Pop Cinema comedy, effortlessly winning over any and all resistance. And it revels in the total breakdown of ethical, social and educational standards as only a good teen movie can.

Good news: the surreal 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, is even better. (Curiously, the directors in both cases – Stephen Herek first, then Peter Hewitt – did their best work in this franchise, never to be topped in subsequent, middling careers that were often slated to comedy for kids.) And 29 years after that, the strange reprise, Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020), is also worth a look, even if it’s far below the class of the previous instalments.

Postscript 2026. There is a special connection between me and this film, relating to an incident from my journalistic years of writing (freelance) for newspapers (1987-1994) – mainly, within that period, capsule ‘movies on TV’ and ‘movies on VHS’ reviews. At one point in 1989, the possibility arose that I could be ‘second stringer’ to the main film reviewer handling new theatrical releases for a particular newspaper – in other words, that I would handle the popular genre junk that he had little time or patience for. This well-known and much-liked reviewer had made his name doing a quite thoughtful film spot on TV (writing was rarer in his career) – but his beat was almost purely mid-range/middlebrow arthouse and ‘prestige’ film festival fare. So, arrangements were discussed and instantly Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure appeared on the schedule: that was the Junk of the Week I would gladly champion as second stringer! But, it seems, I was a bit too enthusiastic about this prospect (showing my hand too soon!), and so Chief Reviewer, smelling a subversive rat, swiftly revised his plan: no support person was needed, and he’d review Bill & Ted himself! In the event, he did his level best to seem hip to this teen-pop-cinema event – and I had to wait until 1995 to review first-release movies for a newspaper. Such is life!

MORE Herek: 101 Dalmatians, Rock Star

© Adrian Martin 1 October 1991 (+ 2026 update)