'Bill and Ted Face the Music' film review: Film's beloved airheads return to save the universe
While far from excellent and not quite bogus, the long-awaited sequel 'Bill & Ted Face the Music' (available on VOD and in select cities starting Aug. 28) sprinkles some fun moments in an unnecessarily muddled journey through time, space and the afterlife.
In short: After decades of failing to write the song that will unite the planet, middle-aged Bill & Ted get help from their grown daughters to write a song to save the entire universe. Stars Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Samara Weaving and William Sadler.
'Face the Music' is 88 minutes long. And feels too long and too convoluted. And no movie that's not even an hour and a half long, with end credits, should not feel too long or complicated.
First the good news: Bill & Ted are still the same morons that they've ever been. Almost 30 years later and the co-stars haven't missed a beat. Reeves and Winter know exactly who Bill & Ted are - and it's fun to see the pair remain elementally the same, even if there's an undercurrent of regret and frustration to them after decades of failure. The best moments of the now 'Bill & Ted' trilogy are the ones where Bill and Ted just get to be their silly but earnest selves.
'Excellent Adventure' is one of the great time travel movies of all time. 'Bogus Journey' at least took the pair to news places. 'Face the Music' injects a crazy new plot with ludicrous stakes, and tries to weave several plot threads together -- a problem compounded by the fact that no single plot thread is that compelling.
If the first movie hinged on time travel and the second took Bill & Ted to the afterlife, 'Face the Music' uses both elements. It would have been nice to see the pair take on a new journey, but the film retreads familiar roads and drops in a ton of "fan service" nods and winks. That said, at least 'Face the Music' adds two new dimensions - their daughters and their interactions with various embittered versions of their future selves.
Weaving ('Ready or Not') and Lundy-Paine ('Atypical') are fun, near perfect facsimiles of their iconic fathers. And that in and of itself is a bit of a problem: 'Face the Music' introduces two new heroes who are essentially just younger versions of the beloved rock star duo. And since the previous two movies were solely rooted in Bill and Ted as hapless young goofballs, Weaving and Lundy-Paine's fun performances don't add anything particularly new to the series.
'Face the Music' has a lot going on - a very little of it makes sense. The first movie is absolutely silly, but at least there was a clear objective. This third movie has several parallel plots: Bill & Ted trying to steal something, their daughters traveling through time and some killer robot from the future. The killer robot plot just doesn't make any sense. It's dumb. There's one line of dialogue to justify the robot's existence - and it's a logical stretch that is just stupid. That said, the robot himself (played by 'Barry' star Anthony Carrigan) is one of the funniest characters in the movie and the best new addition to the series since Death. Daughters Billie & Thea's adventure ... is basically a rehash of the first movie, just super condensed into a b-plot. And as mentioned before, watching Bill & Ted tangle with their future selves is amusing but repetitive.
The very idea that a single song can save the entire universe is ridiculous - even by 'Bill & Ted' standards. At least the previous two movies were smart enough to focus on keeping the pair alive to inspire the world at some later point in time -- but for some reason Bill & Ted must save existence. And how it's actually accomplished is ridiculous.
Final verdict: Like the two previous films, 'Face the Music' has some interesting ideas and fun moments - but this new film doesn't have the focus of the first film or even originality of the second movie. But it's still nice to take another journey with Bill & Ted in the iconic phone booth one more time.
Score: 2.5/5
'Bill & Ted Face the Music' opens in select cities and on-demand starting Aug. 28. This scifi-adventure-comedy is rated PG-13 for some language and has a running time of 88 minutes.
