BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC:
THIRD ADVENTURE IS TRULY “EXCELLENT”!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** out of 4
ORION PICTURES AND UNITED ARTISTS RELEASING (MGM)
Everyone’s favorite dim-witted, time-traveling dudes are back in Bill & Ted Face the Music, the long-belated third installment of the Bill & Ted trilogy that began with the 1988 sci-fi comedy classic, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and continued with the bizarre Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey in 1991. I actually revisited the first two films specifically for this review and they’re still very fun movies today that have a strong balance of goofy and clever humor, imagination, and two very charming leads that paved the way for other dumb comedic duos like Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World, Beavis and Butt-Head, and Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber.
The best way I can describe the Bill & Ted movies is like Back to the Future meets Dumb and Dumber and about as funny and smart as those films as well. It’s easy to see why Bill & Ted is such a beloved movie among both kids and adults, with its unique blend of time travel science-fiction and silly humor, a colorful cast of characters, and even some heartwarming moments at times, it’s a comedy that stood the test of time, no pun intended.
Now, nearly 30 years since the release of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey we have Bill & Ted Face the Music with Keanu Reeves (Speed, The Matrix trilogy, John Wick trilogy) and Alex Winter (The Lost Boys, Freaked, In Search of Darkness) reprising their roles as Bill and Ted, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon returning as writers (The latter also produces this movie), and in the director’s chair this time is Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest, Fun with Dick and Jane (2005), RED 2) to give these two lovable doofuses a most “Excellent” and nostalgia-filled final adventure. While I wouldn’t call it their best or most “Excellent” adventure, it’s nevertheless an enjoyable blast from the past and a very funny movie.
The film follows Bill Preston (Winter) and Ted Logan (Reeves) who are now grown up and have daughters of their own, Thea (Samara Weaving-Home and Away, Ready or Not, Guns Akimbo) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine-Atypical, Downsizing, Bombshell). However, their rock band The Wyld Stallyns failed to write the prophesied song that would unite the world resulting in Bill and Ted falling on hard times.
But when they are visited by a woman from the future named Kelly (Kristen Schaal-Bob’s Burgers, Gravity Falls, BoJack Horseman), the daughter of their old friend Rufus (Originally played by George Carlin in the earlier movies) who informs them that time and space are beginning to collapse and can only be stopped if they write the song that would save life as we know it.
Bill and Ted decide that instead of writing the song that would unite the world, they would just use the time traveling phone booth to go forward in time and steal the song from their future selves in a literal race against time to save the universe. Meanwhile, Thea and Billie embark on an adventure through time of their own to bring together a group of historical musicians consisting of Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still), Louis Armstrong (Jeremiah Craft), Mozart (Daniel Dorr), Ling Lun (Sharon Gee), Kid Cudi (Played by himself), and a drum playing cave woman named Grom (Patty Anne Miller) and form a band to help their dads.
The film also stars Erinn Hayes (Childrens Hospital, Medical Police, It’s a Disaster) as Princess Elizabeth Logan, Jayma Mays (Red Eye, Heroes, Glee) as Princess Joanna Preston, Anthony Carrigan (Barry, The Forgotten (TV series), Gotham) as Dennis Caleb McCoy, William Sadler (Die Hard 2: Die Harder, The Green Mile, Iron Man 3) reprising his role from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey as the Grim Reaper, Hal Landon Jr. as Captain Jonathan Logan, Beck Bennett (Saturday Night Live, Brigsby Bear, The Angry Birds Movie 2) as Officer Deacon Logan, Amy Stoch (Dallas, High Incident, Murder, She Wrote) reprising her role from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey as Missy, Holland Taylor (The Truman Show, Legally Blonde, Two and a Half Men) as The Great Leader, and Jillian Bell (22 Jump Street, Goosebumps, Brittany Runs a Marathon) as Dr. Taylor Wood.
Overall, Bill & Ted Face the Music is a fun, light-hearted, laugh-yourself-silly throwback that is sure to put a smile on even the most cynical of movie watchers thanks to its likable characters and laugh-a-minute jokes. The performances by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are the highlight of the film, they still nail the characters of Bill and Ted and not once does their shtick ever get stale unlike other long-belated returns such as Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as their Dumb and Dumber characters, or Sylvester Stallone as Rambo.
Bill and Ted may be in their fifties now but they’re still those lovable albeit dim-witted rapscallions we knew back in 1988 and 1991 and Reeves and Winter continue to bring their charisma to the characters. It’s also kind of funny to see Keanu Reeves return as Ted after previously portraying Neo in The Matrix and John Wick.
Most of the jokes hit bullseye with some of the best being every time Bill and Ted go further in time and encounter their future selves and how each version of them that they come across is awful. Top it off with Prison Bill and Ted and some damn good makeup that gives Gollum a run for his money and you got what I can best describe as a comedic marvel.
Another moment that also had me laughing hard was Thea and Billie’s subplot where they use a time machine to round up all the historical musicians for the band and just seeing them all interact with one another. It isn’t quite on par with the mall destroying scene from the first movie but the duet between Mozart and Jimi Hendrix is now officially the most epic thing ever put to film.
I think the only real negative I have for this movie is that the ending feels extremely rushed and almost like the film just comes to an abrupt stop after Bill and Ted save the day. There isn’t much of a resolution or a proper sendoff for the characters that probably could have been improved by a quick rewrite, thankfully it doesn’t ruin the movie.
Bill & Ted Face the Music is a perfect example of a feel-good adventure comedy that has something for everyone. Time travel, goofy characters, silly humor, and a surprising amount of heart, my advice is to get yourself into that phone booth and let the laughs and adventure begin.
From the blog www.moviewatchinpsychopath.blogspot.com
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