Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure Blu-ray Review

To coincide with the release of Bill & Ted Face the Music StudioCanal have re-released Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD Blu-ray.

Bill S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) are best friends, high school students, and aspiring musicians. Their music will bring about a utopia in the future, but they are risk at of being separated due to them failing history. A man from the future, Rufus (George Carlin) travels back in time to help the pair with their history presentation by giving them a time machine so they can abduct some of history’s greatest figures.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure can be described as short and sweet. It was barely 90 minutes and even for this short run time, the film had to pad itself out with some plot detours. It was a basic story that was a product of its time by being a combination of a time travel film, a teen comedy, and having a big performance at the end. This was part of the film’s charm.

The key to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’s success was its lead characters. Bill and Ted were utter dimwits and when they did do their presentation with historical figures, not much history was taught. However, the pair were likeable, and well-meaning if naïve. Their philosophy of ‘be excellent to each other’ was something that the majority can agree with and it works a central principle for a society.

Winter and Reeves had excellent chemistry with each other which was evident by the first interactions where they ended up in a feedback loop. It was a witty exchange and it continues from there. The pair were loyal to each other, whether it was trying to study so that Ted doesn’t go to military school or Bill fighting some castle guards when he thought his best friend was dead. It was fun when to hear Bill speak in an elegant manner when asking a pleasant if there were any people of historical significance.

Even though Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was a goofy comedy there was some fun wordplay in the film and it was hilarious seeing Bill and Ted blatantly kidnap Sigmund Freud and Beethoven in public. But other scenes felt more like sketches. The film did at times cut to a subplot where Napoleon navigates a small American town in the ‘80s. Whilst the sequence where various historical figures getting into trouble at the mall felt more like a concept for a music video – moments like Beethoven playing the keyboard and Joan of Arc leading an aerobics class did look like a music video.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was the film that made Keanu Reeves’ name. He quickly shot up in stardom but also developed an image that he wasn’t much different to his character. It took a long time for him to redefine himself as an action star – first by doing films like Speed and The Matrix, and later with the John Wick series.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure does entertain in the moment and inoffensive comedy but it was also a lightweight offering.

Special Features: The Blu-ray comes with tons of special features including two commentaries, an hour-long behind-the-scenes documentary, interviews with crew members like the screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, and guitarist/composer Steve Vai, and an episode of the Bill & Ted cartoon.