Bill & Ted Face the Music is the third film in the “Bill & Ted” franchise, coming 29 years after the release of the previous entry Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (which itself is a sequel to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure). All three films follow the titular Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves), two dopey Californian teens (and later adults) that aspire to inspire the entire world with the shredding of their bodacious band Wyld Stallyns. Face the Music follows more in step with Excellent Adventure than it does with Bogus Journey. Whereas the latter deals with the duo’s trip to heaven and hell, the most recent installment brings back the time-traveling antics of the former. But there’s also some hell stuff in this one too.
Almost three decades since they were prophesized to write the song that will unite the world, Bill and Ted are now middle-aged men struggling to maintain their relationships with their princess wives and daughters Billie (Samara Weaving) and Theodora (Brigette Lundy-Paine). On top of their personal problems, they’ve been ushered into the future and given a warning that unless they unite the world by that evening, all time and space will be destroyed. The movie seems to very coyly skirt around how or why this will happen as well as how there is a hard time limit on something that can seemingly be circumvented by the time travel the movie is built around. Faulting the writers for these lapses in logic would feel like scolding an untrained puppy dog for making a mess on the carpet; you know what you were getting when you signed up for it.
It’s extremely off-putting (upsetting maybe?) to see Keanu Reeves reprise his role as Ted. Clean-shaven, and with a kind-of frumpy middle-aged adaptation of his 80s haircut, his appearance here kind of undoes a little bit of the badass persona he has cultivated recently with the John Wick films. Oddly enough, I struggled for the first half of the film trying to associate him with what is quintessentially the ultimate Keanu performance. Alex Winter, who has for the most part stayed out of the public eye for the last 20-odd years, seems to hold down his aging Gen X doofus much more believably in what I consider the stronger half of the duo for the entirety of the film.
Neither of them holds a candle to Anthony Carrigan as Dennis Caleb McCoy, the film’s shining comedic core and killer robot sent to eliminate Bill & Ted as a last resort to save the universe. While Dennis may not get much screen time compared to the rest of the cast, practically every time he was on screen I was fighting back sincere laughter. Between this movie and his role as NoHo Hank on HBO’s Barry, I am going to be watching Carrigan close going forward.
In spite of its endearing goofs and absurdity, though, Face the Music has serious issues with its structure and pacing. The majority of the film is centered around Bill and Ted travelling to points in the future where they attempt to steal the idea for the world-uniting song from themselves. These little vignettes are entertaining in themselves but do very little to actually progress the plot. Spliced between them are bits with Billie and Theodora travelling backward in time, amassing a group of historical musicians that they hope can help their fathers write their song. This too amounts to almost nothing in the long run, other than serving as a cutesy homage to the first film. All in all, there are enough crisscrossing loose plot threads here for your grandmother to knit you a nice scarf. Out of plot, I guess.
Anyone lining up for the newest Bill & Ted knows more or less what they’re going to be getting with Face the Music. If you unconditionally loved the previous films, you will have plenty to love here. I was surprised, however, at how much this installation felt like a diluted mashup of those that came before. Not many new ideas are introduced to really make it stand on its own. Even my favorite character Dennis is more or less a carbon copy of William Sadler’s Death character from Bogus Journey.
Bill & Ted Face the Music still follows in line with the classic Bill & Ted warped but somehow fitting logic and oddball sense of humor but filtered through the lens of someone just going through the motions despite not really having their heart in it anymore. It’s hard to capture the feeling, but the closest I can relate is how tired Harrison Ford looked throughout the entirety of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Maybe this franchise was best left reminisced upon.
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