The Keanu Reeves Project - Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey

BILL AND TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY (1991) - "Ted" Theodore Logan

Well it looks like I've been slacking a little bit on the project here but I'm back on the case.

If you had not seen, the first piece of tragic news was announced last week when it was announced that John Wick 4 is being delayed a full calendar year due to coronavirus complications.  While I cannot say that this is unexpected it is extremely disappointing to say the least.  I mean, I understand that you can't exactly film a movie right now.  I think even John Wick would find it difficult to kill a bunch of dudes with pencils and other household items if he had to socially distance.

I do wonder what John Wick would do under a social distancing scenario though.  Maybe take his dog on some long country drives.  Maybe target practice.  Who knows.

With that said, as of right now, the very long awaited "Bill and Ted Face the Music," the third (and final?) installment in the Bill and Ted series is still slated for release in late August.  The problem of course, is that I don't know if movie theaters are going to be operational and how summer movies are actually going to come out.  I certainly was and still am planning on seeing this on opening day but now I'm really just hoping they do a digital release so I can watch from the comfort of my couch where it's a lot less likely I could catch a potentially lethal disease.

Stop, I can only get so erect

I could swear that "Face the Music" spent 15 years in pre-production as I've been hearing rumors about this movie for what certainly feels like forever and I couldn't even believe my ears when Keanu and Alex Winter released an announcement just about a year go.

I'm going into this one with exactly zero expectations.  I am assuming the movie will be little more than fan service and that's just fine with me.  I'm going to do everything I can to avoid reading or watching anything about the movie so I can continue to temper expectations and go in watching with a totally clean slate.  

So anyway, I watched Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey the other night for the 150th or 200th time and what can I say, it's still completely wonderful.  It's actually a bit surprising to me that they even made a sequel.  The first movie was certainly a success but it's not like it was a mega-hit movie.  But in 1991, there I was with my best friend Michelle whose mother was nice enough to take us to see it in the theater despite having absolutely no interest in it herself I'm sure.

Much like "Excellent Adventure," I spent countless hours from 1991-1998 rewatching "Bogus Journey."  It's not quite as good as the first movie but still has plenty of good laughs, and every time Bill, Ted, and Death mug a group of people and recite song lyrics to God while trying to get into heaven I still get a good laugh.

From 8th - 10th grade I must have watched "Bogus Journey" with my friend Vincent at least 50 times and we reached a point where we could recite the full movie by heart, much to the annoyance of our other friends.

I really only have two reasons to nitpick the movie and why it comes in as just a slightly worse movie than "Excellent Adventure":

I truly hate the alien character they meet in heaven, Station.  Station is just this really ugly, greasy looking creature that is supposedly the smartest living being in the universe, and while they/he/it does create "Good Robot Us-es" I would think it would be able to add some more value in general.  Also, Death scoffs and Bill and Ted for assuming that the smartest beings in the universe are humans yet we don't see any other aliens walking around heaven.  I just hate this part of the movie.

You're in the wrong movie, alien dudes.

I've also never been a fan of the childhood flashback sequences in hell.  The Easter Bunny and Scary Grandmother (also played by Alex Winter) always creeped me out more than they made me laugh.  Gotta love the hell version of Colonel Oats from the Alaskan Military Academy though, particularly when he demands that they "get down and give me....infinity" leading to the question, "I wonder if he'll let us do them girly style."

But remove these two aspects and the movie is still, well, excellent.  William Sadler as Death is a goddamn revelation and the sequence of him battling Bill and Ted in various board games is as funny in 2020 as it was in 1991.

What can I say, I fucking love this movie.

BEST PART: William Sadler as Death is so goddamn good in this movie, so I'm going with the scene where Bill and Ted are playing against him at various board games.  Sure, it's a spoof of an older movie but it's just so funny.

WORST PART: Okay, this movie isn't perfect.  I've always hated the part in hell where they relive their biggest fears, Bill seeing his grandmother and Ted's encounter with the Easter Bunny.

Box Office Mojo Information: $38 Million/$81 Million inflation adjusted, 33rd highest grossing movie of 1991 on a $20 million budget.

Rotten Tomatoes: 54% Critics, 56% Audience - this is a notable drop from the previous film, further proving that everyone is fucking stupid.

IMDB: 6.3 

My Movie Rating: 9/10.  Just slightly worse than Excellent Adventure for the reasons noted above.  Other than that, this is still a movie I'll probably watch at least 50 more times in my life if I don't die soon from COVID19.

Keanu Rating: 10/10.  Yeah, he's still perfect as Ted.

Up next: My Own Private Idaho - I've never seen it but I've got low expectations because I don't like anything that I've seen that's associated with Gus Van Sant.