February 17, 1989
Orion
Comedy, Sci-Fi, Historical
VHS
C+
Every time I start to watch this movie (and I've seen it a few times since the original theatrical release, when I was 21 and living in Southern California), I wonder why I never got around to watching the Bogus sequel. There's that awesome Big Pig song "I Can't Break Away" playing over the then-cutting-edge visuals as the opening credits play. And there's the Bill & Ted bromance. (With a typically '80s touch of them cheerfully calling each other "fag" after they hug in relief.) And there's George Carlin as the coolest big-screen Rufus since Groucho's Mr. Firefly.
But then there's that darn time-travel plot. Nothing against time travel of course, but so little is done with it. We're meant to find it automatically funny when two modern dudes travel into the past, which it sort of is. But we're also meant to find it automatically funny when the historical figures enter modern (1988) San Dimas, CA (actually Arizona). And it just isn't. Part of the problem is that the writers (and of course Bill & Ted) seem to have only a superficial knowledge of who these figures are, so we get a Beethoven who can hear well enough to appreciate a synthesizer, and a Socrates who hits on girls at the mall. And a Napoleon who loves water slides and sundaes?
At this point, the movie is most notable for truly putting Keanu Reeves on the map, and for paving the way for Wayne and Garth and so on. Note, Stephen Herek would also direct Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, about a very different Bush-Sr.-era teen.
Hal Landon, Jr., who plays Bill's father, was Cornfield in Scavenger Hunt. Amy Stock was the nameless Girl in Bed in Soul Man, but she had since gotten married (becoming Amy Stock-Poynton) and worked her way up to the more memorable role of Bill's sexy young stepmother. Philip V. Caruso (who seems to be primarily a still photographer) plays Dance Photographer here and would be War Commercial Photographer in Wag the Dog.
No comments:
Post a Comment