Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 23, 2016

Is it mere coincidence that both Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Doctor Who feature phone booths that act as time travel portals? In the commentaries included on both films in the new Bill & Ted collection from Shout! Factory, screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon actually state that they had never heard of Doctor Who before they wrote the first Bill & Ted film, and that the idea of putting the time travel device in a phone booth was "presented" to them, and that they in fact wanted the boys' van to be their "vehicle" to other eras. The hilarious thing about this is that neither of these franchises evidently was able to effectively skry the future to know that phone booths would pretty much go the way of the dinosaur by the 21st century, meaning that any time travel to the future would seem to be inherently anachronistic (at least the DeLorean had the advantage of being a car, a technology still in use, plus it looked kind of cool). Or is that one of those time travel paradoxes that science fiction writers so love to luxuriate in? On the other hand, you could almost make a case that Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure's Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon knew they were offering up something intentionally dumb seeming, since Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure luxuriates in stupidity the same way that science fiction writers do with regard to time travel paradoxes, and there's no doubt that one of the silliest running gags in the films is seeing a telephone booth plop down in everything from the Wild West to Ancient Greece. As my colleague Casey Broadwater mentioned in his Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure Blu-ray review of the old MGM release, the first film is "lovably idiotic", positing two dimwits who manage to stumble into greatness while on an ostensible “field trip” to help them ace a history exam. Shout! Factory has now assembled the original film with its 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, along with a third disc of extras.

For reviews of each of the films in this set, please click on the following links:

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Blu-ray review

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey Blu-ray review

Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Video quality of each release is assessed in the above linked reviews.

Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Audio quality of each release is assessed in the above linked reviews.

Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The two films offer commentaries and trailers on their respective discs. See the above linked reviews for details. This three disc set also contains a disc comprised entirely of the following supplements, some of which were released previously on both DVD and/or Blu-ray:

• Time Flies When You're Having Fun! - A Look Back at a Most "Excellent Adventure" (1080p; 1:01:14) is a great retrospective filled with some excellent interviews with Reeves, Winter and co-writer Chris Matheson, among many others.


• Bill and Ted Go to Hell - Revisiting a Bogus "Journey" (1080p; 52:04) does much the same service for the sequel, featuring more interviews culled from the same sessions that are in the first documentary.


• The Most Triumphant Making Of Documentary (1080i; 30:53) is an archival piece.


• The Original Bill and Ted - In Conversation with Chris and Ed (1080i; 20:15) is another older piece documenting the creation of the characters.


• Score! An Interview with Guitarist Steve Vai (1080i; 12:46). Evidenly Eddie Van Halen wasn't available.


• The Hysterical Personages of Bill & Ted (1080i; 15:27) is a fun documentary detailing some of the historical folks the pair encounter.


• Air Guitar Tutorial (1080i; 13:15) features the Rockness Monster and Bjorn Turoque.


• Vintage EPK (1080i; 6:39) promotes the sequel.


• The Linguistic Stylings of Bill & Ted (1080i; 3:41) recaps some of their peculiar patois.

Additionally, two postcards and a Wyld Stallyns guitar pick are included.

Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

With the long rumored third Bill & Ted outing still little more than a rumor (the screenwriters reference it a few times in their commentary tracks), fans of these two lovable dimwits will need to make do with the first two films. Both films are goofily enjoyable in their own way, and this Shout! Factory release has upped the ante by including some appealing new supplements along with a gaggle of previously released bonus material. Recommended.