Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

3/4

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Terry Camilleri, Hal Landon, Jr.

Rated PG for Language and Crude Humor (I guess)

Anyone can write a comedy about dumb characters.  After all, laughing at someone's stupidity is human nature.  But to make a truly successful comedy about characters with limited brainpower, you have to be smart about it.  "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" is funny not because the two heroes are unbelievably dense (although that is funny), but because they are so logical in the most illogical of situations.

Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Reeves) are two wannabe rockstars (who don't know how to play the guitar) and best friends.  They're also quite dense; apart from walking and talking, they're ill-equipped to do anything that requires any semblance of thought.  That, as it turns out, is the problem.  They're failing in school, and unless they get an A+ on their final project, they'll flunk out and Ted will get shipped off to military school in Alaska.  Help arrives in the form of Rufus (Carlin), a time travlin' dude sporting awesome shades who arrives in wicked phone booth.  Apparently, the music of Bill & Ted's band, Wyld Stallions, is the cornerstone of society a few hundred years in the future.  So with the help of the phone booth, our dim-witted heroes journey through time to pick up the likes of Napoleon (Camilleri), Billy the Kid (Dan Shor) and others.

Playing an extremely stupid character is easy.  Keeping them fresh for 90 minutes is another thing entirely.  Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are up to the challenge of keeping viewers interested in Bill and Ted.  The key to their success is their enthusiasm and their playing ridiculous characters without a hint of a wink or a smile.  Although neither of these two dunces possesses a lot of brainpower, they appear to be quite content with who they are.  It gives the characters a different edge than your usual dim bulb who seems to wish they were smarter than they actually are.  Although they frequently have silly grins and exuberant energy, neither Reeves nor Winter seem to be winking at the audience.  They play the roles straight.  Well as straight as they can possibly be.  With characters this absurd, it's quite a stretch.

The supporting cast does their jobs, but frankly, no one (except for maybe Camilleri) has much screen time.  This is all about the two title characters, and that's to the film's benefit.  The exception is Napoleon, who gets stranded in modern day San Dimas, California.  His attempts to survive in the 80s are hilarious.

Director Stephen Herek keeps things at a fast pace.  This is good so that the humor doesn't flag and we don't get tired of Bill & Ted.  He knows how to time a joke and while the effects are cheesy, they work within the context of a film.  Still, the laughs start slowing down once the scene at the mall is over (I'm not going to spoil the surprises).  Then again, we do get to see Honest Abe say "Party on, dudes!"  Ten bucks says you won't hear Daniel Day-Lewis say that in Spielberg's Lincoln epic.

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