Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

It was only on my second viewing, years later, that I realized two things about this movie: 1) I enjoyed it immensely, and 2) that because its execution is decidedly sharper than the premise itself warrants. I had laughed my way through the movie before it occurred to me to renew my initial protests--valleyspeak and loogies and airheadedness (even *good*-natured airheadedness) just aren't inherently funny, especially when drawn out to feature length. But though the movie's momentum does begin to sputter out towards the end, Reeves and Winter and Sadler (and Hal Landon Jr. in an unforgettable scene) display such a remarkable sense of comic timing throughout that even the more clumsily-scripted jokes (e.g. Ted failing to recognize a certain inhabitant of Hell) work as effortlessly as the witter ones (e.g. the challenge). And the teaming of Winter and Reeves clicks so well that the teaming of Bill and Ted (who spend only one scene separated in the entire movie, disaster if they're not well-matched) appears utterly unstrained.

(Side note: I found the first movie to be only sporadically entertaining--sightly different comic sensibilities there, it seems.)

I give it a 7.75. Surprisingly good fun.