The Great Movie Re-Watch

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

Director:

Peter Hewitt

Writers:

Chris Matheson

Ed Solomon

Starring:

Keanu Reeves

Alex Winter

William Sadler

Joss Ackland

Blurb:

A tyrant from the future creates evil android doubles of Bill and Ted and sends them back to eliminate the originals.

Thoughts:

I almost didn’t watch Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Like Excellent Adventure I’ve watched it pretty recently and it’s not my favorite in the series. I put it off while I debated, but ultimately decided since I’d already written a post for the first one it wasn’t fair not to do one for the second.

So here we go. Bogus Journey is the darkest of the trilogy, even with the end of the world happening in the third movie. Bill and Ted actually die and there’s a scene in hell where they deal with their worst nightmares. The nightmares aren’t scary, but they are a little trippy.

The movie as a whole is a bit out there and adds a supernatural element to the series that wasn’t there. We had time travel, but it was assumed to be science based. Now we’ve got Death playing bass and losing Battleship. There’s even a conversation with God and an alien species. They went all out.

It still ends fairly positive, but it doesn’t have that same upbeat feeling throughout. In the original the stakes weren’t as high and death certainly wasn’t involved. Death was the best addition to the movie, though. His scenes were always funny and I’m glad he returned in the last movie.