Despite the first Bill and Ted film being one of my all-time childhood favorites, I’ve never embarked on the bodacious quest that I do today: To watch all three films back-to-back in a short, strange marathon. I was set to do some time traveling myself, careening from the ’80s to the ’90s to the 2020s with Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves as two laidback slackers who just might save the human race as we know it. A few times.

So join me for a revisiting that’s full of surfer lingo, metal rock, amazing supporting cast members, and a couple trips to hell itself… not to mention the old west and a water park!

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

Revisiting one of my favorite childhood films wasn’t a disappointment — it was a welcome trip to the (heh) past. Yes, Excellent Adventure is dopey silliness at its core, a “weedless stoner” comedy if there ever was one. But it’s so sincere, breezy, and good-natured that it’s hard to hate on it.

Other than noticing for the very first time that Billy the Kid rides the escalator handrail up like a horse, what popped out to me this time around is how well-paced this film is. This is a zippy 90-minute journey that has to introduce the future world, the unique time travel mechanics and transportation, its two main characters and their quandry, a whole bunch of other travel companions and their time periods, Napoleon’s modern-day adventures, sequences in the mall, home, and police station, and the final history report (on a Saturday! in a packed auditorium!).

Yet it doesn’t lose us one bit, with quick scenes and a lively rock soundtrack augmented by David Newman’s score. Humor is its top priority, and that goes well with the constantly changing time periods and various characters (my kids were laughing so hard at Ghengis Khan grabbing Abraham Lincoln and yanking him into the time booth).

Sure, the lingo and Bill’s distracting midriff date the film, but it’s kind of in the best way. This was the type of comedy that the ’80s did very well, marrying adventure, rising stakes, and extremely likeable characters together while giving you a headrush by the time the end credits arrived.

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

A few thoughts going into this one. It’s wild that Hollywood used to release PG movies for wide audiences instead of always pushing the PG-13 threshold. It’s crazy that for 29 years, Bill and Ted was strictly a duology. I noticed that they switched up the actresses playing the princesses/girlfriends. I also find it interesting how the fashion from the first movie to the second shows how the early ’90s was even more color-drenched than the late ’80s.

I used to dislike this movie for (mostly) eschewing time travel in favor of an exploration of the afterlife, but I’ve come around on it. It sidesteps the sequel trap of shamelessly copying the first movie by pushing it in a new direction (while still hosting a lot of callbacks, of course). It doesn’t stop me from wishing that they’d brought back Billy the Kid and some of the other historical figures, though.

Then again, the addition of William Sadler’s Death was a masterstroke. An insecure, game-cheating, grumpy Grim Reaper who just wants to be part of the gang became just as iconic as anything else in this series. I wish it didn’t take so long to get to the actual afterlife adventures — 36 minutes into a 93 minute film — but at least the pace is still snappy with stuff happening all the time.

The sense that everyone’s having a ton of fun continues to be strong here, too. There’s a lot of imagination — exorcisms! killer robots! good robots! surreal hell rooms! Ben Franklin! Death! Battleship! Melvins! the Easter Bunny! alien geniuses! Battle of the Bands! — and the whole thing just reeks of the early ’90s in the best way. I also love that this movie tried to coin the phrase “Station!” (based on a script typo, apparently), but it obviously never caught on.

I read somewhere that Bogus Journey was like the ultimate movie Mad Libs, and I concur. It’s a whole lot of ideas thrown at the screen. Maybe it’s a bit messy, maybe they couldn’t think of anything fun to do with heaven, but it’s quite the trip and a rare ’90s sequel of an ’80s movie that doesn’t completely flub it.

OK, so one thing bugged me. In the first movie, Rufus makes a big deal about how the “clock in San Dimas is always running” as they travel in time. Yet at the end of the second film, Bill and Ted spend 16 months in another time period learning guitar while coming back to San Dimas immediately. According to the series’ own rules, 16 months should’ve passed by. Oh well. Get down with your bad self. Station!

Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020)

I never knew this before, but all three of these movies were written by the same two guys — Ed Solomon (De Nomolos backwards!) and Chris Matheson. It’s a rare thing to get a full series with the consistency of the same writers, but here you go. So what did Messrs. Solomon and Matheson come up with for the final installment… three decades after the first two?

Bill and Ted Face the Music is the entry that I was looking the most forward to rewatching, mainly because I’ve only seen it once before upon its release during the COVID year, and I remember it being OK but not as good as I’d hoped.

What sticks in my craw here is that there’s a weird bit of very deliberate retconning where the full ending of Bogus Journey is reversed that instead of uniting the world in musical peace, the band breaks up and Bill and Ted fail to write the one song that’ll be their great hit. Feeling the need to knock the heroes all the way back down so that they could scramble back to the top again is a pitfall of too many legacy sequels, and it’s a shame that this went there.

Then again, how hard am I going to be on a sequel that I never thought I’d live to see? At least there’s clear fondness for the series, with callbacks, familiar characters (Deacon marries Missy! The princesses with yet again new actors playing them!), and the classic phone booth abounding.

I just love to see Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter — now in their 50s — effortlessly slipping back into these roles and embracing the goofy charm that made this bromance famous. I like that they have daughters (very well-cast and infectious in their own excitement), but this film struggles with wanting to pass the torch while also give Bill and Ted a final adventure. That’s another legacy sequel trap, and it dilutes the storyline.

Bill and Ted going forward into their future while Billie and Thea go back in time to recruit a historical band seems to work a bit more upon a second watch (not to mention the princesses having their own mostly offscreen adventure). And getting to hang out with Dennis the killer robot and Death once more is quite the trip.

Face the Music is the messiest of all of the trilogy in terms of pacing and story, and that’s just the truth. Fortunately, it’s also just as a charming, quirky, and interesting as its predecessors. That keeps it from being a dud, thank goodness. This wasn’t a necessary movie in any way, shape, or form, but I’m not complaining that it exists. It started slow but ramps up to a really good time.

“Yeah, that’s a robot in hell.”

Final thoughts

Apart from a few casual slurs that add some momentary ugliness to the first couple movies and the not-quite-perfect final installment, the Bill and Ted trilogy was a most excellent rewatch. Wherever Game of Thrones lies on a tonal chart, these movies rest at the opposite end. The affable cheeriness our our leads and the true spirit of really weird adventure that runs throughout is uplifting and most non-pretentious.

There’s nothing deep or profound here, but the Bill and Ted flicks mean a lot to me anyway. It’s like revisiting some old friends, only to find out that they’re still as wonderful as they always were.