‘You have sank my battleship…’
As previously discussed, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was one of the films that defined my childhood. The sequel I had seen a bunch of times too, and in many ways it had an even more profound affect. I’d never really considered hell or the concept of the grim reaper as the personification of death until I watched this film as a kid. The hellscape conjured by director Peter Hewitt here is actually fairly nightmarish, and this, coupled with the introduction of the similarly chilling evil-robot-Bill-&-Ted ensured that this sequel took an unlikely and probably unearned importance during my tentative years. And yet, I’d obviously blanked out the final thirty minutes, because it is, and I don’t say this lightly, utter shit…
Instead of Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) travelling back through time, they end up dead and take a journey to the afterlife. A bogus journey to be more specific. Once there, they meet Death (William Sadler), and it turns out he is hilariously terrible at literally every game in existence and so he must bring our boys back to life. Can Bill and Ted make it back to the plain of the living in time to win the battle of the bands and save their relationship with the princesses? Will Death ever learn how to play Twister? Can anyone explain what possessed the filmmakers to include a pair of furry aliens who can only say their own name and walk around completely naked? Who knows. Certainly not me.
And this is the paradox here. …Bogus Journey is both too ambitious and not coherent enough. There are so many ideas packed into the first hour, most of which is great, that it seems bizarre just how much the final third of the movie feels like unnecessary padding. The last ten minutes specifically are an utter no doubt cocaine-fuelled mess that manages to capture the excesses of the 80s and early 90s in a way that renders it almost unwatchable. It’s a baffling, inexplicable mess. And not in a Gremlins II way (another film that flew too close to the sun), but in a way that feels tagged on and tacky. It’s as if they just didn’t know how to end the movie and so they came up with this shit at 3am the night before filming wrapped.
All that being said, …Bogus Journey is never boring. It’s genuinely innovative in places. Heck, Sadler is fantastic as Death. So, maybe I should stop moaning and just enjoy it.
Excellent!