Dude! Everyone’s favourite residents of San Dimas, California, Bill (Winter) and Ted (Reeves), returned for a sequel to their excellent adventure in Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey.
And quite surreal stuff it is too – director Peter Hewitt (who was just twenty-five when he directed this, his debut feature) references Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death while following the boys on their new journey.
This time, a bad guy (Joss Ackland) from the future (where the older Bill and Ted rule all) has sent evil robot replicas of our heroes back to the present to bump them off. Can Bill and Ted beat Death (William Sadler) by playing battleships, Twister and Cluedo with him? Can they save their girlfriends from the evil robot dudes? And most importantly, will they be back in time to perform at the Battle of the Bands?
Even better than the original, this is packed with laughs and extremely clever bits amongst all the dumb-dude stuff. Reeves and Winter are both terrific – especially as their evil robot selves, while Sadler almost steals the show as a Death who can rap (‘You might be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you’ll dance with the reaper’) yet is still worried about how cool he is. Eye-wateringly funny.
Is Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey suitable for kids? Here are our parents’ notes...
Younger viewers (this is really aimed at teens) may find Death a bit scary to begin with.
If you like this, why not try: Teen Wolf, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Weird Science, Napoleon Dynamite, Ferris Bueller's Day Off,