Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) is about two high school students about to fail history who have to be rescued, because the civilisation of the future is founded on their music. A man from that future gives them a time machine and they start collecting historical figures for their presentation and bringing them to the mall. It was shot in 1987 over ten weeks around Phoenix and Tempe in Arizona, with a few scenes in Italy. Then it could not be released for two years. The reason was that its distributor went under. De Laurentiis Entertainment Group fell into serious debt in late 1987 and filed for bankruptcy in 1988. While the film sat in post production the test screenings went extremely well and other distributors took an interest. Nelson Entertainment and Orion Pictures picked up the rights for about a million dollars. It finally opened on 17 February 1989. The casting net was wide. Stephen Herek saw between 200 and 300 actors, and River Phoenix, Sean Penn and Brendan Fraser were among those considered for Bill. Keanu Reeves was one of the first to audition and was identified as Ted almost immediately. When he was paired with Alex Winter in callbacks, a shared interest in bass guitar and motorcycles built the chemistry that got them both the parts. It cost ten million dollars and made 40.4 million in the United States. It runs 90 minutes. Good for: unembarrassed eighties comedy, time travel jokes, and the beginning of Keanu Reeves. Less good for: the history is deliberately wrong and the jokes are shallow. All the film's energy comes from the chemistry between its two leads, and if that does not land there is not much else.