So underrated

“Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey” doesn’t take itself seriously in the slightest, which I think in this case is probably hard to do. Sequels either live or die on how people expect them to be bigger, better, and more in depth than the first but how to do that when the last thing your first film was about was deep people? That “Bogus Journey” keeps the spirit of the first, while finding new avenues to travel, is its real joy.

The sequel picks up at the University named after the future’s titular heroes where students dress in bright, oversized neon clothes and get to hear lectures from the Franklins (both Ben and Aretha) as they teleport in by phone booth. Not bright, but dressed in all black is De Nomolos (Joss Ackland), an evil warlord tired of the Bill and Ted nonsense and so he’s created robot clones of the dimwitted duo and sent them back in time (in the magical phone booth) to kill them. “Aim for the cat” says the robot dimwits as they land in the past.

Meanwhile Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are trying to win a battle of the bands competition with their band Wyld Stallyons and have made girlfriends and bandmates out of 15th Century Princesses Elizabeth and her sister Joanna. Things have not changed for them much, other than High School classmate Missy now being Ted’s mom instead of Bill’s, and when the clones show up, the guy’s think they’re here to help like last time.

I love the idea of the clones and the exchanges between the two sets of Bill and Ted’s rely on clever lines as much as on stoner dialect. “I gotta remember to be more considerate to myself when I become him” is one such great line that is a perfect blending of the two. As the robot clones succeed in killing Bill and Ted, a new wild ride opens up to the film, not cheating history but cheating death.

William Sadler plays the Grim Reaper in the movie, an exact replica of death from Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”. Just here we see the guys good-naturedly bet him in games of chance to stave off the afterlife and help them save the world instead. This leads to some classic scenes, heightened especially by Sadler’s flustered/humiliated reaction shots and stiffly funny delivery.


The film also has fun with ghostly material- allowing the guys to fly into bodies of adults (who then talk like the guy’s) and participating in seances. Unexpectedly, the production design also gets very intricate- especially on a short trip to hell, with architecture that reminded me a lot of “Beetlejuice”, and heaven, which appears to look far more serene. The trip to heaven also doesn’t skimp out putting the guy’s in contact with more legendary figures.

At the forefront of this is still Reeves and Winter, who play dim but never stupid. These guys have their own view of the world and find their own brand of profundity in it. The rest of the cast, from Sadler, Ackland, and George Carlin (not in this one nearly enough) can only try to keep up with the huge expressions of personality these guy’s show and the fact that they do it so well is one of many nice surprises in this underrated sequel.

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