ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

It's not every day you get to see a rib-tickling, feel-good, action packed, time traveling, science fiction comedy/adventure.

This movie, speaking in the vernacular, is a hoot.

And it ain't a bad science fiction movie either.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the only time-travel movie in which the characters successfully reverse cause-and-effect by making something happen in the present by planning to go back in time and making preparations that bring about the event.

In other words, whenever they want an "effect" to happen, they make a mental note to go back in time and set up the "cause". So for them, subjectively, it becomes "effect-and-cause".

The oral history report the boys give their high school assembly in the climax is a magnificent stage production that, on first viewing, seems much too elaborate to be spontaneous — until you remember that Bill and Ted can spend days of subjective time getting ready for something that seems to occur just minutes after it's conceived.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Nice trailer for a goofy/funny movie. Enjoy, Dudes!
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___ Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Official Trailer


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

This WAS indeed a funny, funny movie!

Great fun fusion of sci-fi and teen romp nonsense!

Not every sci-fi film has to be 2001 ASO serious. There is lots of room for Bill and Ted and Marty and the Prof!

Thank Rao!
Space Pirate

[Bud Brewster]

[Bud Brewster]

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I posted a fan-made trailer for The Last Starfighter (1984) on the thread for that movie, and the trailer had this amusing message at the beginning.





I wondered just how true the claim at the bottom was, so I made a list of 1980s science fiction films that I thought were good, just to see if that decade really did produce a significant number of “the best” sci-fi movies.

This movie is on the list I made. I know what I like about the film (and a few things I don’t like), but I’d like to hear the pros and cons from the rest of you folks.

So, what do you think, guys?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

A trancendent movie!

In that it went beyond all semblence of conventianal science fiction and just went NUTS!

There is hard Sci-Fi, and there is just for fun Sci-Fi.

This very much falls into the latter category.
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln:



"Be excellent to each other, and . . . party on, Dudes!"
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 77 trivia items for this movie. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text.
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~ The phone booth time machine in the film was given away as a contest prize in Nintendo Power magazine, as the magazine was promoting a then-new Bill and Ted game for the NES.

Note from me: I wonder what the winner did with the phone booth. It wouldn't look real good sitting in the living room, would it?

~ For years, Keanu Reeves lamented that his epitaph would be "Here lies Keanu Reeves. He played Ted."

Note from me: He apparently got over that, because there's talk of a new Bill and Ted movie.

~ In the original script, the time machine was a 1969 Chevy van, but the filmmakers thought that it would be a rip-off of Back to the Future (1985). So, they changed it to a phone booth (apparently unconcerned that Doctor Who (1963) uses a police telephone box as its time machine). Also, when they used the van, Bill and Ted picked up more historical figures than they did in the final film.

Note from me: The way the "phone booth time machine" special effects present the way the machines come and go is brilliant! They didn't just appear and disappear in a flash of light, they drop down out of the sky and the collapse straight down into the ground. I love it!

~ Alex Winter claimed that he gets two different letters from teachers - positive ones from history teachers for encouraging children to learn about history and the figures, and negative ones from English teachers for affecting the way students speak.

Note from me: This is hysterical! Being a retired school teacher, I completely understand my fellow teachers' sentiments — except for the fact that the colorful way Bill and Ted speak is original and quite enjoyable, as compared to the half-literate, unimaginative way kids speak today, with the word 'like" stuck in so damn often it doubles word count and adds absolutely nothing to the message!

When I hear someone talking on TV today and they say "like" every fifteen seconds, it's as if somebody is standing behind me, flicking my ears painfully every time I hear that hated, over-used word!

Watch this short clip from the movie which demonstrates Bill and Ted's witty dialog and notice how they do NOT use the word "like" a single time!

_______ Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure - Clip 1


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

Both Butch and Pye-Rate told me that when they were young the common phrase was "you know". They were broken of that by the reply "NO! we don't know!"
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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[Bogmeister]

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Another sci-fi comedy from the guy who directed Critters (86), this one is over-the-top ridiculous, telling us that a utopia 700 years in the future hinges on the actions of a couple of slackers in 1988 California.

George Carlin, mostly a stand-up comedian, is in the first mysterious scene, beginning his explanations. Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are a couple of grungy heavy metal wannabees who are about to fail their high school history class, after which Ted's father will send him to military school in Alaska. Most of the story revolves around the fact that these two idiots are clueless about nearly everything, yet they are pivotal figures in history.

_____________ Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure


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Most of the plot involves time travel, making this superficially similar to the very successful Back to the Future films. Carlin, who plays a guy named Rufus, is the one who travels through time from the future in what looks like a phone booth (this part copies the whole Dr. Who concept).

He picks up the two slackers in a parking lot in 1988 and the three are off on a series of adventures to different points in history, with the trio collecting various historical figures along the way to help them ace that history test. When they meet Napoleon, there was one more film this reminded me of — Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, like an Americanized sloppy version of the same concept.

Rufus shows them the ropes on this first trip and then leaves them to their own devices.

The two go to the Old West, gaining Billy the Kid as a traveling companion, and then it's on to ancient Greece, where they nab Socrates. Their longest stop is in Medieval England, when they spot a pair of potential girlfriends, but end up with no one.

After that, in quick succession, their band expands with Beethoven, Freud, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, and Lincoln.

The film takes on an aimless quality after this, apropos the two main protagonists, involving escapades in a shopping mall and a water slide park, but there are funny and clever bits involving the power of time travel.

It's startling now to see Keanu Reeves in this supremely juvenile role, knowing that he would be playing serious action leads starting only 3 years later. He comes off as a 16-year-old at best, naive and virginal.

The sequel was Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) and then a short TV series.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Captain Starlight]

I liked the first and second Bill & Ted movies, but the recent third one didn't impress me. I really wasn't expecting much anyway. But the idea that the guys didn't become the great rock group they were supposed to, according to the first two movies, was a let down.

[tmlindsey]

Loved the first Bill & Ted and forced my 'already-made-up-their-minds-to-hate-it-before-seeing-it' friends to watch it on cable and they all loved it, too.

The second one was so-so and the third didn't need to be made from a storytelling standpoint, and was not very enjoyable.
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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"

[Bud Brewster]

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I agree on all counts, although I might be a bit more enthusiast about the second one than you were. In fact, the thing I disliked about it the most was the maddening way Keannu Reeve's hair hung down over his eyes all the time!

The third one just threw out everything good about the first two and made Bill and Ted look like the same two nit-wits we see in the first and second movies — except older, without having learned damn thing along the way.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)