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Like every twenty-something, I remember approaching Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure as a kind of holy scripture of slacker rhetoric. Sure, Mike Myers ripped every single shred of Wayne's World from these guys - and ended up making both better films and pop culture icons out of Wayne and Garth - but before there was ìSchwing!,î there was ìExcellent.î
And for a while in grade school, it was the coolest damned thing of all time.
In addition to this most triumphant addition to a youngster's blossoming colloquial lexicon, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure legitimately got positive reviews when it was released. Those who bemoaned Wayne and Garth's bonehead antics appreciated Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (some guy named Keanu) as they did their best to travel through history and pick up enough souvenirs to pass their history class.
As these two metal-heads cascade through the cracks in time and space, they pick up Napoleon, Billy the Kid, Socrates (obviously pronounced ìso-cratesî - as in boxes), and a handful of other luminaries as they plan a grand return to San Dimas High to impress their teacher and convince him not to give them the proverbial heave-ho.
But as a grown-up person - at least in the physiological sense - I was nervous about returning to the Bill and Ted movies. I'm sure I would find a lot of it familiar, but I felt a high degree of trepidation that the antics prescribed within both the first film and its surprisingly sharp follow-up, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, would be aged relics of a time long past.
Well, the good news is that the films still have their charms. Most notably, the shockingly funny supporting performance from William Sadler in Bogus Journey remains a standard in dumb-ass comedy. When Bill and Ted force his Grim Reaper to a challenge of old-school board games (Clue is particularly well used here), it's as if the nineties never happened - you're right there. And Winters and Reeves have a bona fide charisma to their camaraderie that can't be denied.
Yet while these two Bill and Ted movies provide a small wealth of kitschy nostalgia for those who loved them back in the day, the official verdict is that they don't age as well as one might hope. This DVD box set provides an excellent way to waste an evening, but for every two belly laughs one gets out of the films, there are four or five sorely overcooked missed opportunities.
While it may have played like Citizen Kane in grade school, it's sure hit-and-miss now. Bogus.
The Video: How Does The Disc Look?
Well, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure has the same 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer from its 2001 DVD release, and it's a mixed bag. While black levels, color contrast, and fine detail quality are all pretty damned solid, there is a surprising and disappointing amount of damage to the transfer print - mostly in the form of dirt and grime.
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey doesn't fare all that much better; although the transfer print here is a lot cleaner, black levels and color contrast aren't nearly as strong as in the first film's transfer. And fine detail quality in this 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer isn't anywhere near the definition displayed in Excellent Adventure.
The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
Both discs have 5.1 Dolby Digital upgrades, but for each, not much has been done to liberate the films from simple stereo. It's a shame, too, because films as goofy, irreverent, and envelope-pushing as these (as far as formatting goes) should have definitely exploited soundscapes a lot more than they do. Dialogue sounds fine, music is mixed in all right, but most of the time this is a front-channels only affair. Surrounds are given hardly any workout at all.
Also included are French, Spanish, and Portuguese mono tracks (Bogus Journey), English, Spanish, and French subtitles on both (Bogus Journey also has Portuguese subtitles), and English Closed Captions.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
The first two discs of this collection have very few extras: Trailers on both and a short making-of featurette on Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey .
The bonus disc, though, contains a plethora of featurettes. First up is a conversation with The Original Bill and Ted - screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon - where we see the two spearheads of the Bill and Ted movement talk about how ìdudeî and ìexcellentî went from in-joke to cultural catch phrase (20:00). Then comes a Most Triumphant Making-Of Documentary that follows the development, production, and influence the film had in our oh-so-beloved late-ë80s world (30:00). While it's cool to hear Alex Winter and the filmmakers who funneled his Valley-Boy witticisms into film discuss the ins and outs of the film, this documentary is shockingly, almost maddeningly Keanu-free. Whoa.
The interview with Steve Vai is a little overcooked, even if it adds a bit of history to the air-guitar ethos of the film (12:30). More fascinating is the air guitar tutorial featuring The Rockness Monster and Bjorn Turoque (are those the best names, or what?); these air guitar champions give us civilians a look at the wild world of imaginary musicianship (13:00). The Hysterical Personages of Bill and Ted is a goofy little featurette that takes a ludicrous view on the ìhistoricalî peoples Bill and Ted visited on their most excellent adventure (there's both a fifteen-minute and an eight-minute version; the 8-minute one is literally the original sped up to 2x speed - what a bunch of geeks).
Then comes an episode from the Bill and Ted cartoon - One Sweet and Sour Chinese Advenutre to Go - that runs about 25 minutes, and a four-minute featurette called The Linguistic Stylings of Bill and Ted where sections of the film fly by with definitions of our favorite duo's lexicon presented as subtitles. Next up is a gallery of notes and scribbles from the films' screenwriters original jam sessions as well as six thirty-second radio spots and previews for Spaceballs, Saved!, Walking Tall and Hoosiers as well as cover art for The Princess Bride, Much Ado About Nothing, Tune in Tomorrow, Weekend at Bernie's, and Killer Klowns From Outer Space.
Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?
No DVD-ROM features have been included.
Final Thoughts
This Bill and Ted Collection will definitely make you yearn for your pinned pants and old Keanu Reeves posters, but the films work better in hindsight than they do in actuality. These transfers are also just so-so, so even as a definitive look at the Bill and Ted universe, this edition comes up a little short. For die-hards only.
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