Excellent comedy with quite a lot of genius!

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2014)

This film is an 80s classic, as far as I'm concerned in the same category as things like Ferris Beuller's Day Off. Everyone has seen it (if not HOW?) and everyone loves it, films like Real Genius too. 'Excellent Adventure is comedy at it's best; entertaining, funny, cleverly written and stands the test of time as good clean fun. It's great to watch over twenty years later, and still surprises whilst feeling warm, fuzzy and totally familiar.
The premise is simple; two slacker kids with big ambitions get some help from the future where their simple rock band have brought harmony and peace to the world, ended poverty and seen in a Utopian age. It's silly really and naïve in many ways but the writing is most certainly not. It's like Innerspace, funny, daft and if you pay attention you might actually learn something (pulmonary alveoli came up in my Biology A-level so a quote from Innerspace was quite useful by way of revision) and if you know something already some of the jokes in BATEA are actually quite brilliant - watch Freud's corn dog in the Mall ;-)
The script is brilliant, with some great and memorable one-liners, it's family fun, relatively clean and innocuous (quite rare these days), and whilst the main characters are supposed to be slacker idiots, they are actually quite profound and are fairly good role models! Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves play the lead roles (Bill and Ted respectively) and clearly had a LOT of fun making this film (ditto the historical figures) and the chemistry between them was excellent - apparently they were/are friends in real life. They look like they are having fun, the characters had fun and the viewer has fun. It's a popcorn movie, and what films should be about; feel good and uplifting. It's a joy. Their facial expressions and physical comedy are so enjoyable; Reeves especially (more well known now) is just fabulous to watch, and makes me smile all the way through the film. George Carlin is great, and I particularly like the actors who play Napoleon, Freud and Socrates. The SFX whilst a little simple are good and do the job, and haven't dated that much (a bit), and the music/soundtrack is worth an honourable mention.
It's not perfect but then neither is life, and at least this tries to make life a little bit better by existing. "Be excellent to each other," is a good maxim, and the moral behind this film is as bodacious and relevant today as it was in the 80s.