Still fun after all these years

Rating: 6/10 (14 April 2008)

I still remember when the movie came out -- how stupid and awful the trailers looked, and how surprised I was when I really enjoyed the movie. I think the key to the movie's success and its charm is how open it is about being what it is. This is a stupid movie about stupid people, but I didn't see a more enjoyable movie of this type until just a few years ago when "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" came out. The annals of film history will not be cluttered by mention of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as one of the great comedy duos. But what I find appealing about it is that it never descends to mawkish sentiment like John Hughes movies ("Planes Trains and Automobiles" and "The Breakfast Club") for example and his imitators' films always do. In fact one of Reeves' immediate follow-ups, "Parenthood" which starred Steve Martin, was exactly such a horrendous film. The ultimate point of this movie, saving the universe by way of Steve Salas and Joe Satriani-style whining blues-less guitar rock solos, is just as absurd as its main characters.
The interesting thing about Bill and Ted as a comedy duo is that neither of them are the "straight man" in particular. There's no attempt to paint either of them as particularly more attractive, intelligent, or interesting than the other. To some extent George Carlin's Rufus acts as a straight man but he only appears in a few scenes and seems to share Bill and Ted's excellently poor taste in music and grammar. Basically the humor and the appeal of Bill and Ted are the same thing -- they are just so stupid and so optimistic that I think it'd be hard to really hate them. They do the same kind of comedy that Pauley Shore and Adam Sandler did for the next decade: valley-guy moron over his head in whatever situation. But because there's two of them they don't get annoying like those guys do, because there's an endearing quality in their friendship and their trust in each other.
The reason I wouldn't rate the movie very highly is that a lot of the jokes do fall pretty flat upon a repeat viewing and the movie loses a lot of steam in the middle sections set in Medieval times. But compared to its sequel and most other movies of this type it's a masterpiece because it's actually watchable.