Well, it isn't exactly bogus, but it's hardly an excellent adventure.
"Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" is silly, sophomoric and very weird. Or, in Bill and Ted's vocabulary, it's lame, scorched and egregious.
Yet, somehow, on the whole it's better than "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," with a few moments that are riotously funny. (And certainly with better special effects.)
That is not meant to be a recommendation to non-Bill-and-Ted fans, however.
There's still trouble down at the Circle K in this sequel, with a story that is extremely convoluted but basically has our valley-speak heroes (again played as dopey, innocent deadheads by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter) being killed by their evil robot twins, whereupon they meet the Grim Reaper (William Sadler, in a scene-stealing role) and go on a journey through heaven and hell.
The afterlife sequences are by far the most inventive, reaching a hilarious peak with a sendup of, of all things, Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal." In that film, a knight returning from the Crusades plays a game of chess with Death. Here, Bill and Ted play a variety of games with the Grim Reaper, including Battleship, Clue and Twister.
Some other funny bits are Bill's stepmother Misty (again played by Amy Stock-Poynton) divorcing his father and marrying Ted's, a scene where Ted's father and his partner are possessed by Bill and Ted and a throwaway gag that has the Grim Reaper saying to a smoker, "See you real soon."
But as the film lurches into its final third, with two troll-like Martians helping Bill and Ted win the Battle of the Bands with a pair of makeshift good robots to battle the evil robots, it gets complex, confusing and much less funny.
In other words, despite some hysterical moments, this film, like its predecessor, wears out its welcome long before it's over. (It's also rather startling how much this film, at times, resembles "Terminator 2: Judgment Day.")
Still, Bill-and-Ted fans — and fans of the "Saturday Night Live" version, Wayne and Garth on "Wayne's World" — will doubtless find this a totally non-heinous, bodacious time and feel most un-Melvined.
Be excellent to each other, dudes.
"Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" is rated PG for comic violence, a couple of profanities and a vulgar remark or two.