Movies - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

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	Movies - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) is a comedy/science fiction film based on the idea of time travel. It is also a prime example of a buddy film.

The film was released by Nelson Entertainment and Orion Pictures, written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, and directed by Stephen Herek. It starred Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esq., Keanu Reeves as Ted (Theodore) Logan, George Carlin as the mystical Rufus; and eight "Historical Party Animals": Robert V. Barron as Abraham Lincoln, Terry Camilleri as Napoleon Bonaparte, Al Leong as Genghis Khan, Rod Loomis as Sigmund Freud, Tony Steedman as Socrates, Dan Shor as Billy the Kid and Jane Wiedlin as Joan of Arc.

The film was made in 1987, but due to the bankruptcy of the film's original distributor, the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, the project was not released theatrically until 1989. As a partial result of the delay, certain dates in the movie originally scripted as "1987" had to be redubbed as "1988". The copyright date of this movie is 1988 and the same date appears on the DVD cover.

The film's taglines — "Be Excellent to Each Other" and "Party On, Dudes!" — as well as various other California slang phrases enjoyed a brief surge in popularity in the U.S. following the film's release. The film's "no way"/"yes way" exchanges received new life in 1992's Wayne's World
, though shortened to "no way"/"way."

It was followed in 1991 by a sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
.

Two spin-off television series were produced as Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. The first, an animated series featuring the voices of Carlin, Winter, and Reeves, ran for 21 episodes in 1990 and 1991. A later live action series, featuring none of the cast from the movie, lasted just seven episodes in 1992. A spin-off comic book, Bill and Ted's Excellent Comic Book, (following on from Bogus Journey) was produced by Marvel Comics. There were also multi-level Game Boy, NES and Atari Lynx games released, which were very loosely based on the film's time travel aspect. A PC title and a nearly identical Amiga port were made in 1991 by Off the Wall Productions under contract by Capstone Software and followed very close to the original movie.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure the 50th greatest comedy film of all time.

Plot

Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Winter) and Ted "Theodore" Logan (Reeves), simply referred to as "Bill & Ted," are teenagers in San Dimas, California who are in danger of flunking out of high school. A guitar-playing guru named Rufus (Carlin) arrives from a future San Dimas to help them pass a vital history test, because their garage band ("Wyld Stallyns", pronounced "Wild Stallions") holds the key to world peace and ultimate truth but will not achieve its destiny if the duo fail the exam and Ted's authoritarian father carries out his threat to ship him to Oats Military Academy in Alaska. Rufus lends them a time machine disguised as a phone booth, which they use to meet—and "collect"—various historical figures: Napoleon Bonaparte, Socrates (pronounced "sO 'krAtes", and given the surname "Johnson"), Billy the Kid ("Mr. The Kid"), Sigmund Freud ("frood"), Beethoven ("Beeth oven"), Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc ("Miss of Arc", carried on in Clone High), and Abraham Lincoln, to help them with their vital history presentation.

Originally, the time machine was to be a 1969 Chevrolet van, but the idea was nixed as being too close in concept to the De Lorean in 1985's Back To The Future. Instead, the time machine was styled after a 1960s American telephone booth. In hindsight, this was quite similar to the time-travelling British police box of the BBC's television programme Doctor Who; however, the Bill & Ted telephone booth lacked the huge interior spaces of the Doctor's TARDIS. Nevertheless, they managed to get up to eight people in the booth at the same time.

It is interesting to note that Rufus never says what his name is. Instead, Bill and Ted tell their past selves to "listen to this dude Rufus".

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure ]

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