AllMovie

This slacker comedy provides some good low-brow laughs and, sadly enough, delivered many teenagers some history lessons when it was released. Keanu Reeves' breakthrough role as the loveable dunce Ted resulted in typecasting that would plague his career until The Matrix. The film aggravated some educators with its frivolous treatment of academia but brought praise from others for making history fun and palatable. It also stamped words like "bogus" and "gnarley" firmly into the '80s slang lexicon. George Carlin's appearance as the time-traveler Rufus adds a little comedic legitimacy to this little film, which essentially boils down to engaging and well-paced silly, mindless fun with a fairly well-written script. The legacy of Bill and Ted can be traced to the slacker comedies of Adam Sandler, and the film itself was popular enough to spawn an ill-fated sequel and a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon.