Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

EMAILPRINTMGM

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure reviews
44
10.0 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 7 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 10 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Adventure  |  Comedy  |  Sci-fi

Written by: Chris Matheson
Ed Solomon

Directed by: Stephen Herek

Release Date:
Theatrical: February 17, 1989
DVD: December 4, 2001

Running Time: 90 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: PG

Starring Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Robert V. Barron, Terry Camilleri, Dan Shor, Tony Steedman, and Rod Loomis

Bill Preston and Ted Logan are two totally excellent dudes facing one most heinous history exam. With the help of Rufus an ultra-cool messenger in a time traveling phone booth, the triumphant twosome bag a bevy of historical heavy weights like the "Bodacious Philosopher Socrates, "One Very Excellent Barbarian" Genghis Khan, the "Short Dead Dude" Napoleon and Noah's Wife Joan of Arc to stage the most hysterical high school project ever. History's about to be rewritten by two guys who can't even spell. (MGM)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not credited)

Delightfull time-travel comedy.

Read Full Review >
50

TV Guide Staff (Not credited)

Has an intangibly charming goofiness about it that is somehow endearing: here is a movie about teenagers that contains no excessive profanity, no drug references, and no explicit sexual activity.

Read Full Review >
50

Washington Post Hal Hinson

If the director, Stephen Herek, has any talent for comedy, it's not visible here.

Read Full Review >
40

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Everything Reeves has done since always has the whiff of "Ted" about it. Party on, dudes.

Read Full Review >
40

Variety Staff (Not credited)

Reeves, with his beguilingly blank face and loose-limbed, happy-go-lucky physical vocabulary, and Winter, with his golden curls, gleefully good vibes and 'bodacious' vocabulary, propel this adventure as long as they can.

Read Full Review >
30

The New York Times Vincent Canby

Meant to be funny, but it only swells the sinus passages. It is a painfully inept comedy.

Read Full Review >
25

USA Today Mike Clark

Wow, dudes. Pu-trid. (1989 February 20, p.4D)

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 10.0 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Michael R. gave it a10:
freaking awesome.The people that give this movie negative reviews are 30-60 year olds that don't like movies us young adults watch.they grew up in a different generation what they find funny is not funny to me.

S DK gave it a10:
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is the Zen of the 20th century.

Pat C. gave it a10:
A damning indictment of many movie critics who are supposed to be able to evaluate films on criteria and presentation, not preferences for the types of characters portrayed. Even though the premise of this comedy is silly, it's a fully formed presentation with something for everyone. It properly observes that rock music has evolved to where it has the potential for transcendence, with it's modified cover of U2's finest guitar work. It also makes historical figures interesting to high-schoolers, no mean feat. This film is exemplary in its plot and character development, providing just enough information to make us comfortable with its absurd time-travel premise, and builds to it's climax, as the boys attempt to salvage their GPA, which is stunningly inspirational and life-affirming.

Eric P gave it a10:
One of my favourite films of all time, not just because it's sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but because it's also capable of making you smile when you do finally get one of the many hidden jokes. It might seem all dumb comedy, and indeed it's played that way, but the script's not always as dumb as the characters. Whilst they might be playing dumb, Reeves and especially Alex Winter actually manage to pull off pretty impressive feats of comic timing, without which the film would indeed have fallen very flat. If after all that, it's still not to your taste, bogus!

Vikram M. gave it a10:
I'm sorry, you can say I'm insane, you can say how I might be wrong on many levels, but this is a great time-travel comedy. It just made me laugh the whole time, this and Back to the Future are the greatest time-travel comedies ever. Keanu and Alex are hilariously funny in this role. Go see this and forget all about everything you heard and just laugh!

Popular on CBS sites: College Signing Day | Olympics | Lost | iPhone | Cell Phones | Video Game Reviews | Free Music

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use