Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

You may wonder just what could appeal to anyone above the age of 15 in a movie about two dim-witted metalheads who need to travel through time in a telephone box to improve their chances of presenting a very important history report. It's a fair query, but it's also one that has a fair answer.

There's no denying that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is mainly a teen film, but the main characters are so naive and sweet that nothing about the movie really feels as if it's a film JUST showing how cool young things go through their daily lives. It's a film, like many others, about believing in yourself. It's a film about friendship. And it's a film about being excellent to each other. Which, let's face it, isn't the worst message for a teen film to contain.

Alex Winter is Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Keanu Reeves is Ted Theodore Logan. The two young men don't know it, but they will be a pretty big deal in the future. However, that will only happen if they pass that important history assignment, a moment in their lives that is so crucial that a man named Rufus (George Carlin) is sent back in a time-travelling telephone box to hand it over to them and give them the best chance of making everything right for a future generation. Bill and Ted decide that the best thing they can do is actually pick up a few historical figures in order to impress their teacher (Bernie Casey), and to also maybe fall for a couple of princesses (played by the lovely Diane Franklin and Kimberley LaBelle).

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure benefits from a surprisingly witty script from Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon (it may be daft, but it's far from all daft and the time-travel trickery is enjoyably realised), good direction from Stephen Herek that makes the most of the material and resources available and, perhaps most of all, spirited performances from the leads and everyone else involved. Terry Camilleri, Dan Shor, Tony Steedman, Rod Loomis, Al Leong, Robert V. Barron, Clifford David and Jane Wiedlin (as in Jane "Rush Hour" Wiedlin) have fun as they pretend to be, respectively, Napoleon, Billy The Kid, Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Genghis Khan, Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig van Beethoven and Joan Of Arc. Carlin is great as Rufus and Amy Stock-Poynton provides some amusement as the young lady who was once at school with Bill and Ted, but is now Bill's stepmother.

Maybe I am desperately trying to cling on to my last shred of youthful spirit so my opinion should be taken with a pinch of salt, but I think this movie still works well with anyone who still has an urge to turn up the volume when a favourite rock song comes on. The fact that it encourages a responsible mix of partying and learning, because learning is shown here as a GOOD thing, probably upsets as many people as it pleases. Which I just view as another aspect of the film that is most excellent.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bill-Teds-Excellent-Adventure-DVD/dp/B001D07Q8K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370200449&sr=8-1&keywords=bill+and+ted

Spies Like Us (1985)

When Spies Like Us first came out I remember that I rented it numerous times, running home with that chunky VHS box in my pre-teen hands and looking forward each time to the antics of Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase sparking off each other onscreen. And then I was always disappointed by the slow build-up and the flat patches in between the decent moments of comedy, even at that early age.

So it's no surprise to learn that the film turns out to be just the same nowadays as it seemed way back then. The story is a simple one. Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd are two government employees who think that they're being given a chance to be spies when, in actual fact, they're nothing more than decoys while the valued spies get on with their duties. This leads to numerous situations in which our inept leads find themselves way out of their depth and with their lives on the line.

Based on a screenplay by Dan Aykroyd, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, Spies Like Us is clearly inspired by the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "Road" movies and works well as a tribute. Chevy Chase is the fast-talking, bumbling half of the duo while Aykroyd is actually pretty smart and simply unequipped for a mission which the two men have not been expected to complete in any event.

Director John Landis paces things almost exactly as he paced Trading Places, except this time around there are less big laughs in the comedic moments and so the movie feels slower and "flabbier" despite a runtime of just over 100 minutes. Highlights include a selection of scenes showing our duo going through intense training, a sequence in which the two try to pass themselves off as doctors and a finale that features the funktastic sound of "Soul Finger".

Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd play to their strengths, you'll know already if you love or hate them, and the rest of the cast includes such luminaries as Steve Forrest, Donna Dixon, Bruce Davison, Bernie Casey, Frank Oz and, as this is a Landis movie, a number of cameos from the likes of Terry Gilliam, Ray Harryhausen, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi and many others.

Oh, and to end on a little bit of trivia, the "see you next Wednesday" that was a Landis trademark in many of his movies is seen on an army-related poster in the office of Colonel Rhumbus (played by Casey). 

6/10.

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Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976).

Another blacksploitation horror movie from director William Crain (who gave us the highly enjoyable Blacula), Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde sadly fails as an enteraining horror movie, though it does provide unintentional laughs and is hardly ever dull.

 

The story, as you may have guessed from the title, is a riff on the classic tale by Robert Louis Stevenson. Bernie Casey plays Dr. Henry Pride, a good man who is desperately trying to develop a completed formula that will regenerate liver cells. Just when he thinks he’s got it all sorted he decides to test it on a lab rat, which turns white and attacks the other rats. A bad sign, you may have thought, but Dr. Pride takes this as a sign to first inject an elderly female patient and then, a little while later, inject himself. The transformation is instant, Dr. Pride immediately turns white (Stan Winston is credited as the special effects guy here but I can only assume he was simply in charge of buying the flour and throwing it on Casey’s face) and homicidal. 

 

You can have fun watching Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, really you can, but it’s not the kind of fun you have while a movie carries you along on an enjoyable journey. Nope, this is the kind of fun you have simply by pointing and laughing. Which is still fun.

 

The script by Larry LeBron (from a story by Lawrence Woolner though that credit should go, surely, to Mr. Stevenson) is pretty awful in places. The whole thing is badly dated, and that’s not helped by the stereotypical pimp character (complete with pimp hat), completely unbelievable and doesn’t even come close to being scary once. Actually, to be fair, there is one good jump scare. That’s it.

 

Casey does well in the main role but he’s weighed down by clunky dialogue and then the indignity of the flour-faced performance that he has to give. Marie O’Henry is so-so as the prostitute/patient Linda, someone the doctor wants to help until the serum takes over. Ji-Tu Cumbuka steals his scenes once again (he also played Skillet in Blacula) as a verbose lieutenant trying to catch whoever is responsible for the spate of murders on his turf.

After a plodding start that tries to establish the character and the reason why the serum exists, the movie does lift itself gradually but it never gets too far before the ridiculous “monster” and unappealing cinematography bring it back down again. The soundtrack is another area in which the movie is lacking, almost as if nobody could work up the enthusiasm to wrote any decent music accompanying such lacklustre visuals. Overall, it’s easy to say that this entire movie could do with a shot in the arm. Ironically.

5/10. 

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