OMGJeremy

Friday Netflix Instant Watch: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures

Way back in 1990, they decided to make a cartoon out of the wonderful instant classic hit film, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  Ordinarily this is a terrible idea that owners to movie rights should never choose.  Merchandising is pretty tacky quite a lot of the time, and most spin-off creative ideas are just the worst, the most terrible things to try to endure.  Cartoons often seem like the worst of the worst.  Movie sequels, even starring a brand new cast, can sometimes be… well.. if not okay, at least a little endurable.  But cartoons based on movies typically fail dramatically because they have lost the spirit, the point, the actors, the writers, and are animated cheaply.  Awful stuff.

But then there was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures.  Being a fan of the movie as I was a child of that era, and being a child who still watched Saturday Morning Cartoons, I watched the heck out of this show.  I just thought it was the best thing for that first season.  So when I saw that it was on Netflix, I pulled up a chair and immediately began re-watching, ready to turn away after the first episode in total disappointment, having found yet one more thing that my child brain had sugar-coated.  One more thing that would be dead to me.

But not so!  Now, I can’t say that this cartoon is wonderfully made.  And it is kind of silly that every time and place they go has fluent and practically modern style English being spoken, but being a children’s cartoon, it is fine.  It actually has a lot of clever jokes and visual gags in it that surprised me, as I had never noticed them when I was a ten year old.  But, for me, the best part about this cartoon is that they actually had Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves, and George Carlin voicing their actual characters from the movie.  It makes it incredible.   I had forgotten how much I enjoy listening to the way Bill and Ted talk.  :’)

I have heard, though, that Season 2 is very bad.  I don’t know if they had new writers, but they definitely didn’t have the actors playing their parts anymore.  I have never watched that season, and I probably won’t start this time either.  But the first season, I just really like it.  I am glad I am getting to watch it again.

The theme song is still pretty bad though.