I remember enjoying Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure so I was willing to give the sequel a chance. However, when I decided to choke down Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey which premiered in 1991 I found myself becoming rather annoyed. While there were a few bright moments, they were too few and too far in between, and combined with the chaotic plot and darker tones, it felt almost overbearing. To be frank, at times it became a bit too ridiculous and both my children and I were not anticipating the change in tone. While they were pleasantly surprised by the silly nature, my own experience was not as enjoyable.
In the far future imagined by Bill & Ted in the music of The Wyld Stallyns, the Earth is an utopian society. But there is a rebel mad with Chuck De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) who has decided that he can fix the future. And to achieve that, he plans on sending robot Bill and Ted back to the past to change history. In an attempt to stop him, Rufus (George Carlin) in the circuits of time becomes lost. The first thing that Evil Bill And Ted do when they arrive is somehow manage to kick the real Bill and Ted off a cliff which kills them, and then they go back to San Diemas to break up with The Babes (Annette Azcuy and Sarah Trigger) so that the two of them will not win the Battle Of The Bands, which has gained them world fame. While that is happening, the real Bill and Ted are heading to afterlife where they run into The Grim Reaper (William Sadler), and best him in a multitude of games, which brings them back to life along with some alien creatures named Station. The Good robot Bill and Ted versions help destroy the evil counterparts.
Now, this one was tough. The more it dragged on, the more I wanted to switch it off. While the movie clearly attempted to build off the original’s charm, the characters were all too familiar, so we had to go to new places with them instead of just going over ground that had already been traversed. It’s a shame that visiting hell with Bill and Ted isn’t as fun as it probably sounded on paper, because the two lovably lackadaisical slackers are wholly incapable of making this thing enjoyable. Rather, Bogus Journey is far more forced than the original, not helped one bit by some of the most atrocious plot points of the 90s and lack of the outlandish gags that the first film had in bulk. Reeves and Winter play double roles as both the good and evil versions of the characters they portray, the former in a way that is even harder to bear than the rest of the movie, and the latter in such a strong and unexpected manner that it simply doesn’t feel like it is in line with the film’s objective.
But does it appear to work on paper? Probably. The gang all returns too Bill, Ted, Rufus, the gold-digging Missy (an underused Ms. Stock-Poynton), together with the boys’ fathers J Patrick McNamara, Hal Landon Jr, and adds in Joss Ackland as the main villain of the movie, Pam Grier as the organizer of the Battle Of The Bands, and William Sadler all a bit confused as the Grim Reaper, possibly the only real shine of the film. The problem here being the fact that the original movie’s premise, which is traveling in time and diving into history, has almost been omitted as a catalyst for the concept: certainly, Ackland’s poorly titled Chuck De Nomolos does use it as a vehicle to murder our heroes. But aside from a short initial scene and the movie’s final battle of the bands (which is more like a creative sigh of exhaustion than a climax), the really good phone box is hardly used. The concept of time travel and time setting is always there in every movie of the franchise and so for me, it was strange that the movie avoided having to use it too much.
The world-building failures in the movie are evident in the overarching decision of Bill and Ted going through every single part of the Afterlife. They travel from hell, which is where they are introduced to nightmares that is likely going to traumatize children, and then to purgatory where the Grim Reaper waits, and lastly … heaven… where they have to mug God in order to get his attention. The film cannot be fleshed out in a proper way because the tonal balance of fun and strange is far too amusing. William Sadler does a fantastic job as Grim Reaper and it so ironic yet hilarious seeing the dimwits tackle such a gory figure head on. Many chuckles can be imagined here, but the reality is quite the opposite. Unfortunately this is the missing piece in the jigsaw. Lastly, there is the unsupported and poorly documented inclusion of Station, who is referred to as a twin alien and for some particular reason, knows how to create junkyard robots from pieces of hardware. This essentially propels the movie’s second act that is already mediocre to an absolutely forgettable conclusion.
This is the first time I have been so frustrated by a film’s climax. The finale of Excellent Adventure worked because it was charming, paid off multiple character moments, and roused the audience for its energetic sense of closure. Bogus Journey, however, fizzes out and loses the energy and sheer willpower needed to end the film, doing so with cheap visual effects along with two of the worst practical effects seen in modern cinema, Jim Henson Workshop castoffs Station and the Good Bill And Ted Robots that are constructed in the back of a panel van. These elements of the story utterly fail, and anything else which accompanies the climax makes things even more worst than they seem. For example, including a satanic Easter Bunny and a hideous cadaverous grandmother and a belligerent army recruiter as side characters to the film should build the blood of concerned viewers.
For me, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was a letdown. All the fun carefree gaggery and ever hopeful the funny bits found in Excellent Adventure are now switched for a sense of base level nihilism and a mean streak more common to kids’ films these days. And maybe the mindless nonsense works well enough for a few, and the utterly ridiculous slap stick comedy lands well enough in places, but Pete Hewitt’s first feature film as a director is not one to delight in. The performance of William Sadler as Grim Reaper is the cherry on top in a multitude of awful design decisions and deep rooted problems. It is a blessing for both himself and us that George Carlin barely features in this one.
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