Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure: Still One of the Best 80s Comedies?

Keanu Reeves has made a household name for himself. In the 90’s, he was the star of classics like Speed, Point Break, the movie that changed Sci-Fi action, The Matrix, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (record scratch)…okay, so he wasn’t the best part of that movie. Let’s move along! 

In mid-2010’s, he reinvented himself again as John Wick in the John Wick franchise. To this day, he’s kicking ass, taking names and getting us audience members to flock to the theatre and watch whatever he puts out. 

As someone who grew up in the 90s, I would watch all his films. Two of them would stand out to me before The Matrix came out. The first and obvious choice was Speed. The other was Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure…a film that has stood the test of time. So let’s try to guess what number I’m thinking of, hit up the local Circle K and find out when did the Mongols rule China on this episode of Revisited, which is written, narrated and edited by Ric Solomon. 

In this video, we dig into how a low-budget comedy that sat on the shelf for a year ended up grossing four times its budget, spawning a sequel that includes (to date) two sequels, two tv shows, a comic book series, video games and more. Were Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves always the top choices to play Bill S. Preston Esq and Ted “Theodore” Logan? And when its production company went bankrupt, did Bill & Ted almost end up stranded on the shelf, permanently? We dig into all of that, so check out the video and make sure to let us know in the comments how you think Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure holds up all these (many) years later.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure has the following synopsis: Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are high school buddies starting a band. However, they are about to fail their history class, which means Ted would be sent to military school. They receive help from Rufus (George Carlin), a traveler from a future where their band is the foundation for a perfect society. With the use of Rufus’ time machine, Bill and Ted travel to various points in history, returning with important figures to help them complete their final history presentation.