kartooner

“Socrates strolls through the crowded high school audi­to­rium in a bathrobe, nod­ding hello to Sig­mund Freud, as Genghis Khan swings his bat­tlestaff nearby. Abra­ham Lin­coln, Napoleon Bona­parte and Billy the Kid sink back in the plush seats, while Joan of Arc plays with her dog. On stage, Beethoven faces a large array of syn­the­siz­ers, with a com­put­er­ized light­ing sys­tem to intro­duce him to the MTV generation.

The cen­ter of atten­tion, how­ever, is two teenage boys who have brought these leg­endary fig­ures to the present-day to help them pass a his­tory class.

It’s all part of the mad­ness of Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture, a high-spirited comedy-adventure rang­ing from the Dawn of Time to the 27^th cen­tury. With the futur­is­tic assis­tance of Rufus, played by George (Out­ra­geous For­tune) Car­lin, Bill and Ted travel the cir­cuits of time to round up the ingre­di­ents for a suc­cess­ful his­tory project. But are the likes of Billy the Kid and Napoleon Bona­parte ready for shop­ping malls and water­parks?” Star­log Mag­a­zine (May 1998, Num­ber 30)

Noth­ing sums up the late 80s and early 90s like Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture (1989) and it’s sequel Bogus Jour­ney (1991). Star­ring Alex Win­ter and Keanu Reeves as Bill and Ted, the movies depicted their “excel­lent” adven­tures and the char­ac­ters they meet along the way and ulti­mately take back with them to their own time in San Dimas, Cal­i­for­nia, dude.

Nowa­days, San Dimas is only known for Rag­ing Waters and sadly no futur­is­tic Acad­emy ded­i­cated to Bill and Ted, although the city coun­cil should con­sider such a gov­ern­ment invest­ment. You’d have to see the sec­ond movie to appre­ci­ate that com­ment, oth­er­wise its just con­fus­ing, isn’t it?

As far as the stars are con­cerned, since Bill and Ted they’ve approached a mul­ti­tude of projects. Alex Winter’s Freaked, a movie about freaks stars Win­ter as a nor­mal Joe who is trans­formed into a green dis­fig­ured winged crea­ture. He meets other freaks along the way and even­tu­ally, through care­ful sluething, fig­ures out why the freaks exist. As far as Keanu Reeves is con­cerned, he’s done quite well with the Matrix tril­ogy and of course that role in Steve Martin’s Par­ent­hood in the early 90s. George (Out­ra­geous For­tune) Car­lin has been mak­ing com­edy appear­ances all over the globe and var­i­ous guest spots on tele­vi­sion and in the movies.

Let us not for­get the role of Death (aka Grim Reaper) in 1991’s Bogus Jour­ney played by the fan­tas­tic actor William Sadler. Sadler’s most recent movie appear­ance was in the Green Mile play­ing Klaus Det­t­er­ick and as the Sher­iff in WB’s ex-Alien series Roswell.

Despite the 12-year gap from Bogus Jour­ney to now, accord­ing to Keanu and Win­ters they plan on revis­it­ing their char­ac­ters in a movie that will depict Bill and Ted in their excel­lent 40’s. Con­sid­er­ing both of the actors are near­ing their 40s (pend­ing mid-life cri­sis), it’s a bold step for each but a wel­comed one at that. Let’s hope that they craft a excel­lent script and ulti­mately cre­ate a most excel­lent of a movie.

Dude.

For more Bill and Ted-related info, please visit BillandTed.org and XE’s Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent cereal write-up.