Bill And Ted Face The Music
Franchises that wait too long to come up with a “long awaited” sequel are inevitably doomed to fail, with either the original stars being way too old or the fact that they’re just milking the nostalgia of the earlier entries in order to make a quick buck. But sometimes a long delayed sequel can finally bring everything that the franchise was about full circle and this 2020 release (mostly distributed on streaming services due to the general public cowering from COVID and not wanting to enter movie theatres) which finally got made a full 29 years after Bogus Journey certainly carried both the nostalgia factor as well as the paradox in the contrast between its two stars: Keanu Reeves had readily become one of the biggest movie stars of this (or any other) generation whereas Alex Winter had worked mostly behind the scenes as a producer and director and reportedly even had to attend acting classes in order to be prepared to star in a production of this magnitude once again. But here they are, both pushing 50 and sharing equal parts of the starring role duties, but the thing about this entry is in the justification for the story itself since Bogus Journey had ended with the two of them well on their way to superstardom and more importantly, their destiny to forever change the world to one of peace and harmony (complete with none other than Death as their bass player). But a problem had arose, based apparently on the character of Rufus (played by the late George Carlin in the previous films but only appearing here briefly as a hologram) having given them access to futuristic time travel technology, leading to several world timeline altering events over the course of the first two films that were so severe that even the future itself had changed where instead of Bill and Ted being universally revered (as it was in Excellent Adventure), they are now being looked back upon with some measure of doubt as even The Great Leader (Holland Taylor) who is Rufus’ widow has now considered Rufus’ ideas about the duo to be a far fetched theory that he was working from and not in any way definitive fact. And she’d be right, since Bill and Ted were actually morbidly lazy and untalented to begin with, preferring to take shortcuts like using time travel to get the historical figures into modern times to do all their work for them on the history presentation in the first movie. But the even bigger problem is that now the space time continuum is starting to shred and tear itself apart over all of recorded history and the alleged belief is that the duo must now come up with their “special song” that will save the universe and preserve the fabric of reality. Pretty heady stuff, and the fact that their storied falling out with William Sadler’s Death is what led to the downfall of their band having gone from playing The Grand Canyon to now doing open mic nights in front of humiliatingly small crowds and the whole time they still don’t have the first clue about writing that special song to unite the world together as one, something they were constantly told was their destiny by those in the future. Commendably, since both Reeves and Winter obviously knew going in that Bill and Ted were now pushing 50, they were able to tone the airhead theatrics down just enough to capture the proper nuances and subtleties to make their characters believable instead of tiresome, still married to the princesses (whom strangely enough would change actresses in every installment in order to keep their characters young) whom they had picked up in medieval times and now each of them sporting their own mini me daughter (Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine) both in their early twenties who are not only adorable, but are also the catalysts for much of what goes on in the story in that they are not only Bill and Ted’s most devoted fans through thick and thin (“Dads!”), but while Bill and Ted (predictably) are trying to use time travel to possibly steal the special song for themselves, their daughters (Thea and Billie) are using it to put together the most awesome band imaginable in order to save their fathers’ careers, starting with Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still) on guitar before moving on to Mozart on keyboards and others. While this aspect of the plot certainly had the potential to get awesomely out of control, the most important element here comes when all of the major players get blasted down to Hell, which is an opportune time for both Bill and Ted and their daughters to once again approach Death and somberly ask him to return to the band, an all so important necessity since it appears that Death is widely considered to be the greatest bass player of all time. That being said, it is a pleasure to report that Sadler once again steals the show as The Grim Reaper, just as funny as ever with a touch of melancholy now over how impossible it is to have a solo career when all you can do is play bass guitar. But the sweethearted daughters have also remained steadfast fans of The Reaper’s work, making him feel appreciated and thus accelerating his return to the band. If there’s one major drawback here, it’s that the buildup to the big finale makes it so anticipated that there’s no way that the script can make it nearly good enough to live up to all of the previous hype and that certainly turns out to be the case in point, piling on the clusterfuck elements even as the implication is that history in both the future AND the past is now changed in a positive way forever from Bill and Ted’s triumph (i.e. bad things that had happened in our past such as wars and genocide are wiped from history and even Jesus Christ is shown playing air guitar with Judas during The Last Supper) as the universe comes into full harmony. Nonetheless, at the end of the day these films are still extremely goofy comedies, and this one actually contains some absurdly hilarious parts that are every bit as good as the best moments of Excellent Adventure while the return of Sadler as Death helps to accentuate our memories of him as being the most enjoyable part of Bogus Journey, with everything else in between (including the return of supporting stalwarts Amy Stoch as Missy / Mom and Hal Landon Jr. as Police Chief Logan a.k.a. Ted’s Dad) emphasizing both the nostalgia and the expansion of the previous film’s story in such a way that the additions of the daughter characters (with Thea being a dead ringer for Keanu Reeves circa 1989) mainly works because of the fact that they too are a couple of deadbeat slackers just like their dads in the first film and the most potentially shocking twist of them all (that Bill and Ted were actually a couple of frauds for whom Rufus and others in the future had woefully misinterpreted as being some sort of actual musical saviors) is thankfully never taken off the table up until the very end, a welcome return to form and truly a fun revisiting of one’s roots by the one and only Keanu…
8/10