Two high school friends must pass their final history assignment or face the end of their dreams of forming a rock band.
I saw this movie aged nine on its original release and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think my mind was blown by how cool it made the subject of history seem and how harmlessly likeable the main protagonists were. Unlike me, my parents, who are Baby-Boomer generation, sat through it with me and did not appreciate Bill and Ted's dumb valleys, surfer dude, stoner-like personalities. Much to their distain I rewatched it more than once.
My mother said on one viewing 'How can you watch those two ignorant American boys?' To which I replied 'Can you tell me about Socrates and Lincoln?' Just as I suspected she could not tell me anymore than the film could. In fact she'd never even heard of Socrates or any other Greek philosophers. From that moment on she never uttered a word.
I watched it yesterday, aged forty with my four yearly daughter and appreciate how it might have come across to my mother at the time. However, the key to enjoying it as an adult is not taking it the slightest bit seriously. The dumbness of the main characters is part of what makes them so charming and the concept that a future of civilisation will be based on a Californian teenage sub-culture is a joke you just have to buy into and enjoy.
The basic plot structure is solid and it uses all its silliness in a clever way with the time-travel sci-fi moments. I love the little details like the stolen car-keys and Ted forgetting to wind his watch.
Some jokes hit the mark more now than they did for me as a child, particularly some of the innuendo involving Bill's stepmom and Bill's confirmation to Sigmund Freud of his 'minor oedipal complex'. Ironically, looking back at this time-travel themed movie is like taking a journey back to the 1980s with it's fashion, music and shopping-mall culture.
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are perfect as characters who are essentially two halves of the same brain. George Carlin is to coin a phrase 'excellent' as their guardian angel type friend from the future. Also, the visual effects during the time-travel sequences stand up reasonably well by today's standards.
I took a lot of entertainment from it as child and my daughter stuck with it till the end.
For me it is a 7.5/10 but I round upwards.
