Metacritic Film

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

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

MPAA RATING: PG

MGM
Adventure  |  Comedy  |  Sci-fi
90 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters February 17, 1989

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)

WRITTEN BY
Chris Matheson
Ed Solomon

DIRECTED BY
Stephen Herek

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

44 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not credited)
Delightfull time-travel comedy.
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.
50 Washington Post
If the director, Stephen Herek, has any talent for comedy, it's not visible here.
40 Austin Chronicle
Everything Reeves has done since always has the whiff of "Ted" about it. Party on, dudes.
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.
30 The New York Times
Meant to be funny, but it only swells the sinus passages. It is a painfully inept comedy.
25 USA Today
Wow, dudes. Pu-trid. (1989 February 20, p.4D)

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