Station!

Continuing our Keanu Reeves re-watch: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991). I remembered basically none of these movies, except for Bill and Ted's egregious characterization and San Dimas accents. I'm not even sure that I ever saw Bogus Journey.

Excellent Adventure introduces us to Ted "Theodore" Logan (Reeves) and Bill S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter. They are a pair of high school knuckleheads who will fail History and thus high school unless they ace their final(William  presentation. If this happens, Ted's dad will send him to Alaskan military school, and his and Bill's band Wyld Stallyns will have to break up. Since we get to hear a little of the band, and they are terrible, that doesn't seem so bad.

But in the distant, utopian future, society has organized itself around the precepts of Bill and Tedism ("Be Excellent to Each Other" and "Party On"). To help them out, the Supreme Council sends Rufus (George Carlin!) back in time in a phone booth. They will go through history, collecting historical figures, and bring them back for their presentation, and meet some medieval princess babes.

Bogus Journey finds our heroes living in a crappy apartment, working at Pretzel and Cheese. Wyld Stallyns still stinks, but for some reason Pam Grier is willing to let them perform in the battle of the bands. If they win, they will give the speech that inspires the world utopia. Unfortunately, evil  Ackland is has taken control of the time booth in the future, and he plans to kill Bill and Ted and replace them with evil robots. So Bill and Ted get killed up on Vasquez Rocks, where Kirk famously fought the lizard guy. Bogus.

But luckily, while they are in hell, they challenge Death (William Sadler) to a game - but not chess (or badminton): Battleship. Then Twister, Clue, ... Death is a nice mix of Seventh Seal and MST3K's Observers. Just a fussy loser, who gets Melvined by our lads. And once he's defeated, he agrees to help Bill and Ted with anything they want.

The first movie is a great intro to the dimwitted duo. It includes some "observational" stuff - Bill's dad, for ex, is married to Missy (Amy Stoch), a hottie only a few years older than Bill and Ted. Then there's the silly history - We meet Socrates (pronounced So-Crates), who correctly interprets Bill's pantomine of "All we are is dust in the wind, dude", and knows that they get him. And of course, they get out of all their jams without doing anything, expecting their future selves to come back and fix things - and they do.

But adding the "evil uses" to the mix in the second movie really kicks it up a notch. Stupid and evil turns out to be as much fun as stupid and sweet.

But it was really being reminded that George Carlin is in these that made me want to watch. He doesn't do much that's hilarious, but just having him onscreen is a treat. However, what he did to Pam Grier is unacceptable.