Bill & Ted: STILL totally EXCELLENT

Not sure if it has been here on this site, but it’s no secret that I am a fan of Bill & Ted. (Well, if it had been, it isn’t one now.) Yes, they’re utterly silly, but hey, that’s why I like them.

I remember seeing the ads on TV for it, thinking how (dare I say) stupid it looked. But my friend Zaph (rest his soul) and I needed something to do on a Friday night. And we figured: It’s about time travel (a subject of which I am [and he had been] a sucker for) and something, at least one thing, will be funny. Well, we loved it. It had been so much more than I expected it to be, and the toying with time clocked in rather nicely, too. The (sad?) truth of it is... we saw it every consecutive Friday for seven weeks. We probably would have seen it more, but (definitely sadly, perhaps horribly) our preferred movie theater started to chop it up. Yes, really! We knew, we had seen it many times. But whole parts of scenes were missing. I don’t know the reason for it, but nevertheless, it had happened.

I even "had to" have (and did obtain!) a red denim jacket like Ted "Theodore" Logan.  [And did so without the internet.  {The internet didn't exist!}]

Another anecdote... Zaph and I had been in a fast food place and two nuns arrived. They spoke the praises of a movie, none other than Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. They were ecstatic that we liked it, too. They’d been entranced by the wonderful message of “Be excellent to each other,” finding it a hip way of expressing the purest form of their beliefs.

I’ll also tell you that Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is the movie I have seen the most. I won’t disclose how many times, partly because it has been so many times I lost track. (Double digits involved.)

Naturally, I’d been really happy about the sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey coming out. And yes, I liked it, too. No, I didn’t love it as much, but I found it totally worthy. A bit of cool trivia from the sequel - the villain in it is named De Nomolos, a very slick and (ahem!) excellent name for a bad guy. Here’s the trivia part. It’s derived from simply flipping the names of one of the writers (of both films): Ed Solomon.

I even sort of liked the cartoon series. It could have been much better, but what we got had been a lot of fun for someone who just can’t get enough of those lovable doofs. However, as we learned from the ill-fated live action show (which lasted for what, two weeks?) it’s not always the case that we will love them. Not having Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves really made a difference. (In cartoon form it didn’t matter so much.)  [For the record, my friends and I wanted a TV series long before either had been announced.  The cartoon show,as it appeared, had been title Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures.  I don't recall the live-action title and don't even feel like looking it up.  Not to sound pompous, but I liked our title for a series better:  Triumphant Tales of Bill & Ted]

WELL, they’ve been kicking around the idea of a third movie for about 15 years now. I’m happy to report that it is still alive. Yes, there’s a distinct possibility that they’re going for the charm of three. The best news is that Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson, as well as the all-important Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves are all on board - so long as they agree on the script/story. The general consensus is that it will deal with Little Bill and Little Ted (their kids, as established in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.) Too bad George Carlin can’t be involved. Rest his soul, too. If you think about it, it might seem overkill and a rehash to keep his character Rufus as part of the storyline anyway.

Time (ha!) will tell, but I’m hoping it does show up.