Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)

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General		Extras
Category	Adventure	Theatrical Trailer-1:57
Rating
Year Of Production	1991
Running Time	89:43
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Peter Hewitt
Studio Distributor	MGM	Starring	Keanu Reeves Alex Winter William Sadler Joss Ackland Pam Grier George Carlin Amy Stock-Poynton Jim Martin Hal Landon Jr. Annette Azcuy Sarah Trigger Chelcie Ross Taj Mahal
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	David Newman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Auto Pan & Scan Encoded	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English German French Italian Spanish Dutch Portuguese Polish Greek Hungarian	Smoking	Yes, but Death comments on it...
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure ended in such a way as to allow a sequel (what a surprise!). This is that sequel. It is very tempting to say that this sequel put paid to any risk of a third movie in the series, but that would be unnecessarily cruel — it isn't that bad. But it is no candidate for the "sequel is better than the original" club.

    This film is set five years after the previous one, but Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) don't look any different. OK, they are no longer in school: they have minimum wage jobs at Pretzels and Cheese. They are trying to make a go of their band Wyld Stallyns, but they still can't play (5 years, and they have made zero progress?).

    For reasons that are not explored, there is a rebel group in the 27th century who are not happy with the utopia that Bill and Ted initiated. This group, led by a man called De Nomolos (Joss Ackland — he plays all the cool fascists), wants to set up a dictatorship of some kind. They determine that the only way to do this is to change the past and eliminate Bill and Ted's influence. They have created robot replicas of Bill and Ted who will kill the real Bill and Ted and take their places so as to wreck their reputation. These robots, known as Evil Bill and Evil Ted, go back in time in the telephone box and kill Bill and Ted.

    Bill and Ted are more than a little miffed by this. They try to get help by possessing people, and by gate-crashing Missy's séance. No joy. They try Hell, they visit Heaven, they even play a game against Death (an obvious reference to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal). Will they get back? What do you think?

    It's the script that lets this film down. The acting is no worse than last time. The characters are pretty much the same (too much so, given that 5 years is supposed to have passed) — they could have benefited from including more historical characters (that was a strength of the first film).

    If you loved the first film, you may be a bit disappointed by this. If you hated the first one, there's nothing here to change your mind. If you thought the first one was an OK way to pass some time, then maybe this will get the same rating. Just don't expect too much...

Video

    This transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced. That's the original aspect ratio.

    The image is a little soft, but clear enough. There's rather limited shadow detail. There is some film grain, mostly fairly light, but heavier in a few shots, such as at 61:11. There's no low-level noise.

    Colour is fairly well-rendered. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are plenty of film artefacts: dots, spots, and flecks. But they are not sufficient to interfere with watching the film.

    There is some quite minor aliasing. There's no significant moire, and no noticeable MPEG artefacts, other than some light background shimmer at times.

    There are subtitles in ten languages, including English. I watched the English subtitles: they are easy to read, well-timed to the dialogue, and barely abbreviated — quite good. If you have the subtitles on during Missy's séance, you can see what they are chanting during the exorcism — try reading it backwards...

    The disc is single-sided, single layer. That means no layer change. With just the movie and a trailer, the single layer suffices.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English, German, French, and Spanish. I only listened to the English, which is Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps).

    The dialogue is clear enough, with the exception of the character Station (but that is pretty much deliberate). There are no obvious audio sync issues.

    David Newman provides the score again. It's a perfectly reasonable score, but it seems like he wasn't trying too hard.

    The surrounds are not used in any noticeable way. The subwoofer gets little of any significance to do.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menus are simple, static and silent.

Theatrical Trailer (1:57)

    Be excited — this is the only extra you get.

    The Region 1 disc was released at the same time as their version of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

    The Region 4 disc is missing:

• Behind the Scenes featurette (6:38)
• teaser trailer

    The Region 1 disc is missing:

• nothing

    The Region 1 transfer is pretty much the same as this one, even though the R1 is dual-layer. The R1 is a little bit sharper, but the difference is minor. There's not enough difference to give the win definitively to the Region 1 disc.

    An modestly entertaining B movie with a few good laughs, on a bare-bones disc.

    The video quality is good enough.

    The audio quality is good enough.

    The extra on this disc is dead, and I don't think it's coming back.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall