Well, if nobody else is going to get the ball rolling, I saw this at the weekend and here are my thoughts.
They managed to do what every sequel tries to do - be the same but different. Sure, once again disbelief has to be suspended from the outset but they make that deliberately clear again, that it’s not meant to be taken too seriously.
The concept of Bill & Ted being stuck in hell is hilarious, and their individually tailored torments are great. The military drilling is especially good, as that was made clear in the first film that Ted was desperate to avoid going to Oats’ military academy in Alaska. Their separate torments are more hit-and-miss, on the one hand, Bill’s was spot on, no ten-year-old boy wants to kiss his granny, least of all right on the lips, but Ted’s was confusing, I still don’t get what that giant Easter Bunny was all about.
William Sadler as the Grim Reaper steals every scene he is in. I’ve seen him in several other things - Deep Space Nine as Sloan of Section 31, The Shawshank Redemption as Heywood, and The Green Mile as the grieving father of those two girls. He’s a fantastic actor, but this is the only time I’ve seen him in a comedy part, and was pleased to discover that he did win an award for this film. His frustration at losing every game our heroes challenge him to is perfectly paced, building to fever pitch and by the time he falls over in Twister he’s had enough embarrassment . . . so they put him in a dress when they go to speak to the Almighty! Best line? “They Melvined me!”
Joss Ackland is also a formidable villain. World sit-up champion of the 27th century. So that’s what happens if you do lots of sit-ups, you turn evil! Or maybe it’s just the latent sadistic streak in every gym teacher . . . but he plays it perfectly straight and it works very well.
George Carlin as Rufus only appears briefly at the start or the end, but still manages to shine even more brightly than he did in the first film. Partly because of where he appears from at the end. When you remember who he was disguised as, you think about that character’s lines a bit more, and picture them in Rufus’ voice, and it does absolutely fit.
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter of course reprise their original roles, but play two parts here, their evil robot doppelgangers - “the evil robot uses”. They manage to play the evil versions of themselves very well while still being recognisable as Bill and Ted. “Aim for the cat! Aim for the cat!” “Aww, just missed!” But my favourite moment is probably when they are on their way out of hell, and they need to come up with a plan. “If we were good human uses, and we had to beat two evil robot uses, what would we do?”
I think I prefer this film to the first one, but maybe that’s just because I saw it first. (Actually I saw the cartoon series first, but that’s another matter.) In any event, they’re both fun.
There have been rumours over the years of a possible third film, but too much time has elapsed for it to make any sense at all, and even if it was any good, it would still get panned. They ended it in the right place, with Wyld Stallyns finally learning how to play and making good music (courtesy of Kiss in real life), and Bill also complete with ZZ Top beard! And the montage of newspaper headlines charting their progress . . . they ended it in the right place. Please, don’t make a third.