Netflix pick for 9/22/14 – ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’

In this late 1980’s comedy sci-fi classic, “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” is the story of two “slackers” (that’s 80’s movie code for stoners) who have to fulfill their destiny of becoming the most influential artists in history, so influential they bring peace throughout the world and even the cosmos maybe, but in order to do so they need to history class by giving a presentation in front of the entire school for some unexplained reason so to pass this test they are given a time traveling phone booth with which they kidnap people like Socrate, Genghis Khan, Abraham Lincoln, Billy the Kid and Joan of Arc and bring them all back to contemporary California to participate in their presentation. Along the way there are some princesses and George Carlin and Napoleon Bonaparte at a water park.

Suffice to say, this movie is INSANE. And yet somehow this movie was a hit both critically and commercially and we all fell in love with Bill S. Preston (Alex Winter) and Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan (Keanu Reeves) and their crazy antics across time. The movie is full of weird jokes, as well as history based jokes and a couple of time travel based gags, and the story really is kind of sweet when it’s all said and done, since it is about how art can bring people together in peace and Bill and Ted’s love story with the princesses and each other just makes it all so much sweeter, you know what I mean? Plus this makes for the real debut of Keanu Reeves, who had been working for a little while at that point but hadn’t done anything as big as this. He was still a few years away from Special Agent Johnny Utah, a good decade away from Neo, a baby faced, enthusiastic dude just giving it his all, and he’s kind of great.

They’ve been talking about a Bill & Ted 3 lately. I’ve be down for some of that.

Check out “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” here on the Netflix Instant and enjoy the time travelling comedy madness!