Life According to Bill and Ted

The hubster and I have somehow incorporated many of the sayings from the 80’s teen movie, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, into our daily life.

You could say we live life according to Bill and Ted!

If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favour – it’s a bit of a comedy cult classic.

It’s about two dopey but likeable high school seniors (“dudes”), in danger of flunking their history class – because they are more interested in “babes”, and starting a heavy metal band, than studying. Turns out, they have a huge destiny ahead of them – but ONLY if they pass their history oral report. Thanks to a mysterious dude from the future and his telephone box, Bill and Ted go on to present an outstanding report – and receive a standing ovation from their classmates!

It’s funny, family-friendly, and is worth watching just for some of the tragic 80’s fashion. Oh, and it has some most “excellent” music!

A sequel, “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey” was released in 1991; although not quite as good as the original, it’s still fun to watch. There is even some talk of another sequel being in production, featuring the guys 20 years later.

Ted is played by none other than Keanu Reeves (I can’t believe he’s now 50 – a middle aged heart throb!), while Bill is played by the lesser known Alex Winter.

We have watched the movie so many times over the years I honestly can’t remember when we first saw it; and our kids grew up with it. In fact when we were travelling Australia with our caravan in 2001, we made an audio tape of the movie and played it to keep the kids entertained during long car trips!

Life According to Bill and Ted

When asked to share their “wisdom” with a future society, Bill and Ted come up with these two gems:

“Be excellent to each other”;

and

“Party on, dudes!”

But this is just the start of the one-liners that have become a part of our family folklore and are easily adapted into everyday conversation. Here are some other great examples …

• • Bill: “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K” (we even used to have a Circle K convenience store just up the road from us!).
  • Circle K cashier when asked a question: “I don’t know. I just work here.”
  • Teacher: “Who was Joan of Arc?” … Ted: “Noah’s wife?!”
  • Teacher: “It seems to me the only thing you’ve learned is that Caesar is ‘a salad dressing, dude’.”
  • Bill: “Oh Ted, don’t be dead, dude!”
  • Bill (reading from a textbook): “The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.” … Ted: “That’s us, dude!”
  • Bill (describing Ancient Greece): “There were many steps and columns. It was most tranquil.” (Funnily enough the hubster and I found ourselves spouting this one quite a bit on our Mediterranean trip!)

• Bill: “Billy, you are dealing with the oddity of time travel most excellently” (and we might have said that, substituting “foreign” for “time”, LOL)
• Ted (upon being served a beer at a bar in the Wild West): “Whoa, he didn’t even card us dude!” … Bill: “We have to remember this place!”
• Bill (again in the Wild West saloon, playing cards): “Dude, you gotta have a poker face like me”.
• Bill (pretending to be Deputy Van Halen): “Look, we found your keys. If you want ’em, better come and get ’em.”
• Both: “How’s it going, royal ugly dudes?!”
• And a range of words to express approval: “Bodacious”; “Most triumphant”; “Excellent”; and when things are not so good they are: “Most non-triumphant”; “Heinous”, and “Bogus”.

Okay, reading through them now, some of them don’t sound that funny. I guess it’s all in the delivery – so like I said, if you haven’t seen the movie, make sure you do soon!

Do you subscribe to the teachings of life according to Bill and Ted?! Is there a movie that you find yourself quoting all the time, or that has become a part of your family folklore?!