Watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure become an unexpected phenomenon in 1989, any studio executive with at least half a working brain cell would of course fast-track a sequel to ride however much of that wave still remained a couple years later. And because the characters’ first movie had been so Excellent, it stands to reason that the follow-up would inevitably turn out to be a little Bogus.
The sequel’s title Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey either proved prophetic or may have even actively warded off potential viewers, who thought it sounded like a bummer. While not an outright flop, the second movie did less business than the first (working from a higher budget) and was mostly greeted with mixed feelings by fans. Like many at the time, I skipped it in theaters and only caught the sequel later on VHS. I thought it was mildly funny but not half the movie the first one was. Looking at it again decades later, I think that first impression may have been awfully generous. Twice in a lifetime is more than enough viewings for this one.
| Title: | Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey |
| Year of Release: | 1991 |
| Director: | Peter Hewitt |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | Blu-ray MGM+ PlutoTV Tubi Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was released to theaters two years after Excellent Adventure, but production of the two films was actually more than three years apart, due to the first movie getting shelved for a while before its eventual theatrical run. In that time, stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter seemed to age considerably, and look quite a bit older. Winter in particular has a lot of trouble passing as a teenager in this outing.
Reeves was of course in the process of breaking out as a huge star. His action thriller Point Break opened just one week earlier, and he’d build some prestige art-film cred with My Own Private Idaho later that fall. In that context, it’s not too surprising that audiences weren’t terribly interested in seeing him also return to Bill & Ted at the same time. No matter how endearing Ted “Theodore” Logan had been, it felt like Reeves had already outgrown the character and should be moving onto bigger roles.
To its credit, Bogus Journey makes an attempt to be more than just a carbon copy of Excellent Adventure. During its scripting, the film had originally been titled Bill & Ted Go to Hell. Beyond the initial plot set-up, the sequel has less time-travel shenanigans and mostly moves to a new, surprisingly existential theme. Rather than collect famous historical figures for a school report, this time Bill and Ted will explore the divide between life and death. That’s an ambitious, even commendable evolution of the first movie’s concept.
Disappointingly, one thing the sequel has that the original didn’t is a very traditional, clichéd story structure with a clearly identified antagonist the heroes must defeat. In the future year of 2691 A.D., a crackpot revolutionary named De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) loathes living in a harmonious utopia and wishes to oppress the world under his totalitarian thumb. To achieve that goal, he concocts a scheme to send two lookalike, evil Bill and Ted robots back to the 20th Century to kill and replace the original Bill and Ted, thus disrupting their life path toward rock stardom and eventual messianic stature. This will then set a new course to reshape the future into the kind of miserable dystopia where someone like De Nomolos can thrive. (I fear we may be living in that timeline right now.)
Indeed, Evil Bill and Evil Ted successfully murder the real Bill and Ted, but that action winds up sending the two lovable doofuses on a journey through the afterlife, starting in Hell and then making their way to Heaven. In theory, this hook might have given the characters an excuse to interact with more dead historical figures like they had the last time, but Bogus Journey has no interest in that. Instead, Bill and Ted recruit the help of the Grim Reaper and a couple of weird, hairy Martians to find their way back to the land of the living in time for the critical Battle of the Bands, where they must stop the evil Bill and Ted robots, launch their musical careers as originally destined, and save the future.
Whoa!
That’s not an entirely bad pitch for a sequel, to be honest. In its best moments, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey has a a handful of clever ideas to flesh it out. The best of them is an extended riff on Ingmar Bergman’s classic The Seventh Seal, in which Bill and Ted must challenge Death to a game of intellectual superiority – not at chess, of course, but at some games they might actually stand a chance of winning. As the pale-faced and amusingly petty Reaper, William Sadler is game for this nonsense and seems to be having a good time. A few of the set-pieces in Hell also have fun production design in the themes of heavy metal album art or Surrealist nightmares.
On the other hand, the scenes set in the future, where all the characters (including George Carlin in limited screen time) wear ridiculous costumes made of random pieces of felt glued together, are painfully cheesy. Perhaps that was intentional, but it just looks stupid and lame in execution. Is this really a world anyone would want to come true? Heaven isn’t much better, and seems like the most boring place in the universe.
The Video Toaster-quality visual effects don’t help in the slightest. Even with twice the budget of the original, the sequel looks cheaper overall.
In general, Bogus Journey is considerably dumber than the first film, with much broader acting from everyone involved and a very sitcom-like tone. (New director Pete Hewitt’s greatest cinematic achievement after this would be Garfield: The Movie in 2004.) Sadly, it also has way more cringeworthy homophobic slurs. Excellent Adventure dropped one as well, but it went by quickly enough that a viewer might miss or overlook it. That gets repeated several times here, along with some other gross sexist jokes that have aged terribly.
For a lot of reasons, I’m glad I didn’t watch this with my kids. Even if one of my sons hasn’t quite warmed up to it yet, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is still a super-fun comedy that I think holds up really well for the most part. Meanwhile, Bogus Journey… well, I guess it lives up (or down) to its title.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Shout! Factory first licensed and released Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey on Blu-ray in 2016, followed by Double-Feature and 3-Film Collection bundles, as well as a Collector’s Edition reissue – all based on the same underlying disc. An upgrade to 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray then arrived in 2024, available either sold on its own or as part of a Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Trilogy box set.
With the change in director, Bogus Journey also featured a reduction in aspect ratio from the most Excellent 2.35:1 to a more TV-friendly 1.85:1. Most scenes are very blandly lit, staged, and photographed. The 4K transfer is decent enough in general, with fair sharpness and light grain texture, but the HDR grade is slightly dim on my screen.
During its original release, Bogus Journey predated 5.1 audio by one year and played theatrically in Dolby Stereo format. However, it was later remixed into 5.1 for DVD as early as 2001. The 4K offers both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or 2.0 options. The 5.1 track has a rather bright character that can sound very harsh a lot of the time, but the 2.0 is much weaker and duller. Neither is ideal, but of the two, I found the 5.1 more engaging.
Bonus features on the 4K disc include two audio commentaries (like Excellent Adventure, one by star Alex Winter and producer Scott Kroopf, the other by writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon), an hour-long retrospective documentary from 2016, and a trailer. The Blu-ray adds some older material that originated on DVD (all in standard-definition video), including a half-hour making-of featurette, a interview with guitarist Steve Vai, an air guitar tutorial, a vintage EPK promo piece, and a guide to Bill & Ted’s “linguistic stylings.”
Related
- Bill & Ted franchise
- Keanu Reeves (star)
- Ed Solomon (writer)
- Time Travel Adventure
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.
The Video File Blog 
Station…
I guess I’m one of the few people who actually enjoyed this one…but I haven’t watched it in a long time, so maybe I won’t care for it now.
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