Most non-heinous

Lauren and I finally had a Saturday night with nothing to call either of us away to something work related, so we cozied up on our couch, played a board game and decided to watch the movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Honestly, I think the movie popped into my head because I’ve been writing a classroom series for Discovery about Relativity, and so Time and multiple dimensions and whatnot was kind of in my head. Whatever the reason, it was a good choice. I haven’t watched that movie in several years and I forgot what a solid little comedy it was.

For those who didn’t grow up in the eighties and haven’t seen this movie, briefly it’s about two boneheaded high school kids who are trying to form a band, except now they’re failing history. They have one last chance to get an A-plus on their final oral report and pass their class or else Ted will be sent away to military school and the band will never form. From seven hundred years in the future, via a time-traveling phone booth, in literally drops a man named Rufus. He sends the moronic duo on a ‘most excellent adventure’ through history, where they gather ‘personages of historical significance’ – including ‘the most bodacious philosophizer in ancient Greece’, Socrates (pronounced ‘SO-craits’); ‘the very excellent barbarian’, Ghengis Kahn; and of course, ‘the short dead dude’, Napolean. They of course succeed in passing their report, and we realize the full importance of these two kids and the band they are trying to form.

No doubt, this movie requires huge, big, gigantic suspension of disbelief, what with future societies being able to travel through time via a magic phone booth and entire civilizations achieving world peace through one band’s rock-n-roll, plus several dozen other minor plot points that you just kind of have to say, “sure they could have done that.” But if you can do that, it is just ninety minutes of good clean fun. Heck, minus a few dirty words here and there, this movie is even clean enough that I wouldn’t feel weird about my daughter watching it. And if this movie doesn’t fill you with the urge to play air guitar, nothing will. I actually have the Bill & Ted guitar riff as the error sound on my computer. But most of all, and this really is the mark of a truly great movie, this flick has a ton of quotable lines. I mean a ton.

'Sixty-nine, dudes!'

I just wrote another blog about how I don’t like watching new movies anymore and tonight, watching Bill & Ted reminded me why. I honestly don’t think anybody could make a Bill & Ted today. The closest anybody came to trying was that lame ass waste of my life, Dude, Where’s My Car. It’s like Hollywood thinks that in order to make a movie about two idiots, the movie itself has to be idiotic. Yet, Bill & Ted, for as “dumb” and improbable as the movie was, was actually very witty and well thought out. And apart from the titular duo being abnormally stupid with ridiculous surfer accents, you never feel as though you’re watching one-dimensional stock characters. Compare that to Dude, Where’s My Car, which first of all wasn’t so much a movie as a series of idiotic and disconnected vignettes, and whose characters were merely idiots and that’s it. No depth. No arc. Every scene made sure to beat it over your head that these two were idiots and that’s all they were.

'Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.'

But whatever. I’ve already written a blog complaining about movies. Let’s move on. What occurred to me tonight was how this movie really defines my generation. I know that’s a heavy statement, and I don’t mean it exactly the way it sounds. But basically, one’s knowledge of this movie, or lack thereof, can tell you a lot about which generation they are a part of. It all comes down to Keanu Reeves. Everybody from my generation cannot watch a Keanu Reeves movie without thinking, “Dude, that’s Ted jumping on that bus… That’s Ted talking to Dracula… That’s Ted learning kung fu.” If you come from a later generation, you simply replace all those declarations with, “Dude, that’s Neo philosophizing with Socrates.”

'All we are is dust in the wind, dude.'

Something else that’s extra funny about this movie for me personally is George Carlin. Those who know me well know I am a huge George Carlin fan. I don’t own all his albums, but the ones I do own I can quote verbatim from beginning to end. I have the same image of George Carlin fixed in my head as everybody else in this world – that of a crotchety old man obsessed with words and pissed off at the world. But here’s the thing, I first met ole George as Rufus in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. A couple years later I saw him hosting a comedy awards show and had no idea that he was this comedic legend. I simply thought, “Wow, that’s weird. Why would they have Rufus hosting a comedy show?” The first time I heard a George Carlin routine (it was one of his best, where he was ranting and raving about Americans’ love affair with euphemisms) I thought, “Hey, that’s that guy from Bill & Ted on that tape all pissed off.” It’s all so ironic because, obviously Carlin’s role as Rufus was the one where was out of character for most people who know and love him. But tonight, watching him in this role made me laugh because for the longest time, I thought that was who George Carlin really was, and that his comedy routines the things that were out of character.

'It seems to me that all you have learned is that Caesar is a salad dressing dude.'

There is one thing that makes me sad when I watch Bill & Ted. Alex Winter. He played Bill, and for the entire world who knows him he truly will always be Bill. And it’s not like Keanu who simply played Ted in various different roles. For Alex Winter, Bill was really where he topped out. After making the sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, he really didn’t do much. I checked out IMDB and the few post-Bill roles he did have were in movies or TV shows that I’ve never even heard of. It’s really too bad. Why did Keanu have life after Bill & Ted and not Alex? They both certainly seemed evenly pitched in their roles as idiots. But somehow Keanu is the one who achieved longevity. Though, actually, I just did a Google search on Alex, and it looks as though he’s developed a new career behind the camera as a writer and director of films and appears to be doing very well for himself. So… good for you Alex.

'Eat the pig! Eat the pig! Ziggy ziggy ziggy zig!'

But anyway, long story short, Bill & Ted, great movie. If you haven’t seen it, rent it. If you already own it, watch it again, because I’m sure it’s been awhile for you too. Watch it and remember that idiocy can be done smartly. And of course, above all…

'Be excellent to each other… Party on, dudes!'