Review of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) by Amanda B — 16 Jun 2010

Bill and Ted is a ridiculous film with extremely low brow humour but it still manages to be entertaining and has plenty of fun ideas thrown into the mix.

Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves return again as the slacker members of the rock band Wild Stallyns who are destined to be the saviours of the world. Some people in the future have not taken kindly to this fact so they send robot versions of Bill and Ted to the past where they will kill the real Bill and Ted, take their place and thus sabotage the Battle of the Bands competition where Bill and Ted will showcase their music to a worldwide audience. The real Bill and Ted have other ideas though. After being killed, Bill and Ted meet up with the Grim Reaper (a show stealing William Sadler), challenge him to a competition in order to win their lives back and then enlists deaths help to save the day.

The best thing about bogus journey is the original concepts and set designs that are throughout the film. The segment in hell is very entertaining and consists of some great effects for the time. The acting is average just like in the original and much depends on whether you find the extremely low brow humour of Bill and Ted funny. A lot of people will find it annoying but if you don't take it seriously there are plenty of funny lines in there although there are also quite a lot of jokes which miss there mark. Death is by far the funniest character, without him the film would have fallen very flat.

If you enjoyed the original you will enjoy this, it is largely the same but Bogus Journey has a lot more original ideas than excellent adventure without being quite as funny. Entertaining turn your brain off film.