I will start by being very honest about this one and just point out that I have probably not seen this for many, many years now. However, it's still very well loved and it's still appreciated and will still be watched if it just happens to be on TV, I will just watch it anyway. Just squeezing into the 80s classic movies list by being released in 1989 it was directed by Stephen Herek. It stars George Carlin and of course Keanu Reeves who went on to become the huge famous actor and Alex Winter who went on to have a lot of success behind the camera but did appear as a Vampire in the cult classic movie The Lost Boys. Produced on a budget of $8.5m it went on to reap a hefty $40.5m at the box office. The success at the box office led to a sequel soon after and then a third movie which was released this year (2020). With the critics scores we are not going to be troubling the scoreboard with this one as IMDb gave it a middle of the road 7 out of 10 and Rotten Tomatoes were a slightly more generous with an 81% score. Shall we dive into the plot?
In the year 2688 humanity exists as a utopian society based on the inspirational music of the two great ones who established a band called “Wyld Stallyns” with the members of Bill S. Preston Esquire and Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan. Knowing their history the future civilizations are aware that the boys are currently at a crossroads in their lives. So they send one of their citizens Rufus back in time to San Dimas, California in 1988 using a time machine in the shape of a phone booth to ensure that both Bill and Ted (who are not the brightest students) actually passed their history class because failing the class would mean that Ted would be sent to military school. Which will split up the band and thus prevent the Utopian future from happening. To pass their class they have to perform a presentation based on the theme of what would three historical figures make of current or modern life. We find the two at the Circle K convenience store when Rufus initially arrives in the phone booth. This gives the boys the opportunity of travelling through time to collect historical people to bring them back and experience modern life and gain they're opinions directly from those historical people all squashed into a phone booth. Ahead of being let loose on San Dimas. All they have to do is put all this together in time to meet the deadline off the presentation for the remaining members of the history class.
I remember the first experience I had of this was a friend of mine lending me a video tape of the film and as he gave me the tape he said this was awful. It’s basically just a couple of American teenagers that said dude a lot and that's about it, that was all the description that I got. So, based on that I was expecting rubbish to be Frank and what I got was a great laugh possibly expectation levels were low. Maybe this low expectation helped me really enjoy this movie more than I should of. It was just simply funny, it was amusing, it had little throw away lines throughout, that were simply on my wavelength and just made me laugh out loud. It works and it works really well if you want some easy, laid back and let this just wash over you entertainment then put this on and relax. You won't regret it if you go in with low expectations because it worked for me. It is just simply funny, you've got two crazy young teenagers who are just stupid travelling through time, meeting historical characters through the history of time. These crazy pair love heavy metal music, they call each other dude, well in fact they call everybody dude. And they are out there meeting Socrates, meeting Sigmund Freud, meeting Joan of Arc, meeting Napoleon and then convincing all of those plus more and squeezing them into a phone both to bring them back in to the future just so they can experience modern life in a little Californian Town called San Dimas (apparently is a little town). When they get back to San Dimas these characters experience modern life exactly in the crazy funny way you would expect them too and like herding cats they get a taste of what is good and then don’t want to give it up. This is just funny, it doesn’t need to be serious and it doesn't need to take itself seriously it just needs to be silly and enteraining fun and it delivers that to perfection. It doesn't work for everybody which is evident with my mate all those years ago but people must have loved it and still do because they've brought the original actors back (all three of them) if you count the first sequel to be able to release a third in the series this year. I'll be honest and say I've not seen that latest movie yet but I've heard good things about it, so fair play to them and you know what - well done as well. All I can say is I loved it and still do and would recommend it to anyone, just sit back and let it roll, allow it to just wash over you and you'll enjoy it by not overthinking it and just laugh at the madness.
We go from a comedy to a jump out of your seat horror movie. Yes, I did jump out of my seat the first time I saw this. This is scary and is really clever with their take on a story heard before and remade for a modern audience…
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