Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (PG)
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Caution: spoilers.

This came out in 1991, two years after Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. I'm pretty sure I actually saw it in a theater at the time, and maybe I saw it on TV or VHS or something since then, I'm not sure. But anyway, I watched it again on DVD in 2013. And while I always loved the movie, I had been thinking I didn't like it as much as the original. But watching it again now, it's way more non-heinous than I remembered. I'd say I like it very nearly as much as the original. (Some critics might say it's better than the original, and some might say it's way worse. But I definitely think I'm right. The two movies are nearly equally excellent.)

Anyway, it starts in 2691. There's this evil guy named Chuck De Nomolos, who leads a faction that hates the utopia that was created by Wyld Stallyns. He says Bill & Ted are approaching their second crisis (700 years in the past). Bill & Ted and the princess babes (Joanna and Elizabeth) are entering a battle of the bands, which could secure their future or ruin it. De Nomolos and his people storm into Bill & Ted University, where Rufus is teaching a class. De Nomolos has robot replicas of Bill & Ted, which he sends back in time (in Rufus's time machine) to kill the real Bill & Ted, assume their identities and ruin their reputations. Rufus manages to hitch a ride through the circuits of time, but is apparently lost along the way back to 1991 (though we do see him again at the end of the movie).

Meanwhile, in the present, Bill & Ted are celebrating Joanna and Elizabeth's birthday, and propose to them. But later, the evil robots show up, drive Bill & Ted out into the desert, and kill them. The ghosts of Bill & Ted meet the Grim Reaper, but totally ditch him, hoping to warn the princesses and stop the robots. Eventually their efforts get them exorcised, and they wind up in Hell. In order to escape, they challenge Death to a contest... or actually a series of contests. Which they win. So they get Death to take them to Heaven, where God recommends an alien scientist called Station, who can go back to Earth with them and build good Bill & Ted robots to defeat the evil Bill & Ted robots, at the battle of the bands. That goes pretty well, but then De Nomolos himself shows up, and Bill & Ted have to defeat him using the same sort of predestination pardoxes they used in the first movie... though De Nomolos tries the same gambit.

I feel like I've given away far too much of the plot, but I also feel like I've left out a ton of details. It's all just as redonkulous as the first movie, of course; maybe even more so. But it's also just as hilarious. And there's a totally happy ending, and um... it looks like utopia is guaranteed to come into existence, just as it's meant to. Oh, and it ends with an awesome song by KISS, "God Gave Rock 'n Roll to You II."

Followed by Bill & Ted Face the Music