i watched two movies in the last day where Keanu Reeves played a person seeking more in life than just what's dealt to him and goes on a journey of gargantuan proportions, which climaxes in him needing to break someone out of captivity to prevent the world from certain peril. one of them was The Matrix, and the other was Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. i will be reviewing both today, because i loved both to death and think they each deserve a spotlight.

the basic premise is as follows: Bill S. Preston (Esquire) and Ted "Theodore" Logan are two rock-brained high schoolers who care about two things: rock music, and slackin' off. because of this, they've barely done any work all school year, and are going to flunk the grade if they don't ace their final report. worse yet, if Ted fails, his dad is going to send him off to military school in Alaska, which is the last thing anyone would consider excellent. after trying to study together and getting absolutely nowhere, the two are visited by a time traveller from the future named Rufus. he tells them that, in layman's terms, if they don't get their report done, the future might as well not exist, and that they have to do anything in their power to not let that happen. they're given a time machine and are told to go wild, and the two go on a journey through history, gathering up important historical figures from throughout time, all in an effort to absolutely kill it with their book report. hijinks ensue, you take Beethoven and put him in modern day, he's gonna kill it on the keyboard, you put Genghis Khan in a sports shop, he's gonna take a bat and smack a mannequin with it. it's a concept that sounds pretty generic on paper and has been done to death by now by every kid's cartoon on Nickelodeon, but i'm pretty sure Bill & Ted are the ones who made these tropes in the first place. they also do a lot of cool ideas with the time travel gimmick, like how Ted manifests his dad's keys by saying he'll put them somewhere specific in the future. like, yes, that's absolutely not how that would work, but come on, don't be such a killjoy, that's fun!

being a comedy movie from the late eighties, not every joke is gonna land. but i personally have a soft spot for the dumb as bricks surfer dude archetype, and i find literally every line that comes out of their mouths to be funny. Ted especially, anytime he's thinking it's like you can hear the cogs turning in his head while he tries to sort out something to say. "something most unusual is taking place at the Circle K" is such a mundane line, but the delivery totally sells it. there's also a lot of jokes about "oh Sigmund Freud has a corndog and is using a vacuum, get it" but like... maybe it's because i don't watch a ton of movies, but it didn't really get on my nerves that much. i really love how you can tell the two's vocabulary is slowly rubbing off on all the historical figures they're stealing because they just start randomly saying "dude" and "excellent". there doesn't need to be a scene where Bill is all like "okay, in the FUTURE, we call people "dude," get with the program", because 1.) it isn't necessary and would waste time they could be spending making better jokes, and 2.) Bill is probably too stupid (said affectionately) to even think to explain that. one of the scenes that made me laugh the hardest was when the two get to the medieval era and tell Billy the Kid to keep Socrates (who they have been calling So-Crates, which rubs off on Billy the Kid, and is hilarious) entertained while they scope the place out. in the next scene, while the two are looking up at the castle, you can see Billy teaching Socrates to play catch with a red football he found, no words or a character drawing attention to it, it's just a background gag and it had me cackling like a witch. i actually liked Billy the Kid a lot, though my love for cowboys might have me biased. the guy just instantly is okay with time travel and accepts it with no further questions, which only makes it funnier when Socrates starts freaking out over it. and oh my god, while not every one of his scenes hit, Napoleon had a few scenes that absolutely killed me. him telling his soldiers to blow Bill and Ted up was perfect, and the scene with him at the waterpark dressed up like a 50s swimmer, pushing people out of line to get to ride the water slides over and over again is spot on to what he'd probably actually do in that situation.

before we wrap up i wanna have a section for any assorted extras i wanna touch on. i absolutely love the main duo's fits, ESPECIALLY Ted, with the smiley patch on his pants and his red coat he wears around his waist, i love it. weird to think he was played by Mr. Thomas "Neo" Anderson himself. i also really liked whoever played Joan of Arc, all i can say is trans goals tbh. i wonder what else she did, actually? lemme check... oh my god, she's played by Jane Wiedlin?? member of the Go-Gos??? she also apparently played a Hex Girl in Scooby Doo, so i guess playing characters who are trans goals is a running theme for her, huh? the special effects for the phone booth are so of the time, but that's kind of what i love about em. speaking of movie magic, the scene of Napoleon going down the waterslide is pretty impressive for the time. i ain't no camera expert, but i'm pretty sure GoPros wouldn't be a thing for another 20 years or so, which means they probably had to take their bulky, expensive film cameras and take em down a water slide. now THAT'S dedication.

is Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure a masterpiece that's forever gonna stand the test of time? no, absolutely not, it's pure, distilled 80's wrapped up in a time-travel flavored tortilla, and carries all the weird aftertaste that comes with said tortilla. but that's part of what made it so funny and entertaining to me, and i'm glad i finally got around to watching it. i'm probably gonna watch that Bill & Ted cartoon next, since i've seen a couple of clips from it and thought it was pretty entertaining. there was also apparently some reboot recently? i dunno if that's any good, probably not, but who knows really.