Charmingly Harmless

Rating: 6/10 (5 September 2006)

BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE is one of those charming, harmless comedies which, if you grew up in the 1980s, you probably saw once... or twice... or three or four times.
Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves are gnarly as the title duo, two high school headbangers (read: morons) whose future, it turns out, is crucial to the wellbeing of the planet! Trouble is, these dudes are about to seriously flunk history, and if that happens, the entire space time continuum could suffer. Enter from the future Rufus, sent back to the '80s to provide our dimwitted heroes with a time-traveling telephone booth. With it, they round up a who's who of historical figures -- Socrates, Billy the Kid, Sigmund Freud, Napoleon and the like -- to highlight an educational presentation that will be their academic saving grace.
Nothing is overly spectacular about BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE. It's neither roll-on-the-floor hilarious nor ingenious nor packed with amazing special effects. But it does deliver quality over quantity, nicely filling out its 90-minute running time with some chuckles and smiles. The first half is particularly strong as the guys venture from the Old West to medieval castles in search of people whose names they can't even pronounce (Beethoven becomes "beeth oven" and so on). Seeing them try to sweet talk Socrates with rock lyrics and lure Genghis Khan with a Twinkie is good for a laugh. The same fish-out-of-water scenario doesn't work quite as well when these figures enter contemporary times, but everybody puts in their best effort forward. And sometimes, that's all you can ask of a film. A kickin' soundtrack adds to the fun.