Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 23, 2016

Note: This film is available as part of Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection.

Is it mere coincidence that both Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Doctor Who feature phone booths that act as time travel portals? In the commentaries included on both films in the new Bill & Ted collection from Shout! Factory, screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon actually state that they had never heard of Doctor Who before they wrote the first Bill & Ted film, and that the idea of putting the time travel device in a phone booth was "presented" to them, and that they in fact wanted the boys' van to be their "vehicle" to other eras. The hilarious thing about this is that neither of these franchises evidently was able to effectively skry the future to know that phone booths would pretty much go the way of the dinosaur by the 21st century, meaning that any time travel to the future would seem to be inherently anachronistic (at least the DeLorean had the advantage of being a car, a technology still in use, plus it looked kind of cool). Or is that one of those time travel paradoxes that science fiction writers so love to luxuriate in? On the other hand, you could almost make a case that Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure's Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon knew they were offering up something intentionally dumb seeming, since Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure luxuriates in stupidity the same way that science fiction writers do with regard to time travel paradoxes, and there's no doubt that one of the silliest running gags in the films is seeing a telephone booth plop down in everything from the Wild West to Ancient Greece. As my colleague Casey Broadwater mentioned in his Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure Blu-ray review of the old MGM release, the first film is "lovably idiotic", positing two dimwits who manage to stumble into greatness while on an ostensible “field trip” to help them ace a history exam. Shout! Factory has now assembled the original film with its 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, along with a third disc of extras.

Fans of Ingmar Bergman’s iconic The Seventh Seal will know that Death plays a mean game of chess. Film lovers with a more piquant sense of humor may have even seen the hilarious 1968 short The Dove (De Düva), a loving send up of Bergman (with an early screen appearance by the wonderful Madeline Kahn) where Death plays a game of Badminton. Trust Bill and Ted to take gamesmanship to a whole new level, though, and once our intrepid heroes are sent packing to “the other side” (more about that in a moment), they end up challenging Death (William Sadler) to all sorts of silly interactions, including playing Battleship and Twister.

The commentary by writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon included on this release is really quite instructive as to what they were attempting to do with this sequel, and how they frankly succeeded and failed in various ways. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was thrust into production fairly quickly after the unexpected success of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, a success that came after a long unreleased “shelf life” for that film, which in fact came after an equally long and drawn out pre-production process that saw the project go through at least a couple of studios. The sequel was given a large budget but a perhaps insanely short schedule from greenlight to proposed release date, and Matheson and Solomon are up front about how that deadline and their perhaps devolving personal relationship colored their work on the film.

One of the things Matheson and Solomon mention is how the first film didn’t really have an out and out villain, with Ted’s haranguing father coming the closest to that role. This film has several villains, including Chuck De Nomolos (Joss Ackland), whose hatred for the future Utopia fostered by our reluctant heroes causes him to create Bill and Ted robots whom he has plans to send back in time to take the real boys’ places and prevent them from winning a battle of the bands contest, an event which supposedly sets everything up for a perfect new world order. The robots do in fact travel back in time, where the human Bill and Ted simply assume they’re being visited yet again by future versions of themselves. This time, though, there’s foul play in store, and that’s when the “real” Bill and Ted end up figuring out what board game they need to play with Death in order to defeat his nefarious grasp.

There’s quite a bit of funny stuff sprinkled throughout Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, but as even Matheson and Solomon seem to realize, the film is just overstuffed at times, especially in a series of calamitous events that sees the two journeying to Hell and dealing with a large horned dude, and then teaming up with what amount to two Jim Henson Muppets in order to defeat the bad guy robot versions of themselves. The first film had a bit of this same manic quality, but it at least was anchored by the whole historical figure aspect, something that gave at least the illusion of a narrative through line. Here, as Matheson and Solomon admit, there’s a bit of throwing as much shtick at the wall as possible in the hopes that something will stick.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The overall look of this transfer is very much in line with that of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, though this film's emphasis on the "afterworld" leaves huge swaths of the narrative bathed in ice blue tones, something that tends to deplete detail levels at times. There's a fairly marked difference in fine detail between sequences in this blue tone and some of the more bright lit, candy colored scenes that play out in both the "real world" and some imaginary realms. In these moments, detail levels can be excellent. The Hell sequence is understandably bathed in red rather than blue but suffers at times from the same relative lack of detail level as the sequences graded toward the blue end of things. Contrast is a bit iffy in this section as well, making some of the imagery look a little murkier than might be hoped for. Aside from expected upticks in opticals, grain is natural looking and consistent throughout the presentation.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with its sibling in this set, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 mixes. This surround mix is perhaps little more generous in positing sonic information in the side and rear channels than Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was, and once again a generous allotment of rock tunes offer robust low end and good immersive qualities. As expected, some of the SFX sequences offer good sound effects as well, and there is good discrete channelization of effects, especially in the Hell sequence and, later, when Bill and Ted encounter their Muppet like cohorts. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Star Alex Winter and Producer Scott Kroopf


• Audio Commentary with Writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:03)

For additional supplements contained on the third bonus disc of this three disc set, see the Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection Blu-ray review.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The comedy is a little bit more inconsistent in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey than it was in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but when it does work, it's quite winning, and the film has some fantastic supporting turns by William Sadler and Joss Ackland. Unfortunately, George Carlin's Rufus seems to be something of an after thought this time around. Technical merits are generally strong, and once again the commentaries are quite interesting and informative. Recommended.