2020 In Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music

  Severely lacking George Carlin

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When it was announced a few years back that the highly anticipated "Bill & Ted 3" would finally be in the works (and by highly anticipated, we're talking as anticipated as folks could presume given a franchise dubbing Caesar as "a salad dressing dude"), excitement but skepticism zapped 90s babies like the aftereffects of a sticking a finger in the socket of a spaced-out phone booth from the future, and skepticism rightfully so. Former co-star George Carlin was dead, it had been almost thirty years since the last Bill & Ted movie, the sci-fi nostalgia of the late 80s had well been worn out by technology, and even down to the overall plotline of the franchise, the bodacious hair metal boneheads of the past had already secured their future as rock gods who would unite the world with their music. So why did we need another Bill & Ted? Because most films with sequels are obligated to become trilogies? Was this truly out of fan service, or was it really about money at this point? If money was the endgame here, it's no surprise that 2020's Bill & Ted Face the Music often feels like a very shiny Disney reboot of the original films but also pretending to be a sequel to them (no disrespect, fans just might take this one personally).

An opening narration recaps the legendary saga of Bill S. Preston Esquire (a warmly committed Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (a beardless Keanu Reeves), as told by the duo's teenage daughters Billie and Thea (yes, Bill and Ted's daughters are named Billie and Thea, played by Samara Weaving and Bridgette Lundy-Paine), setting the all-too tender tone of the Wyld Stallions finale as we finally get to see how Bill and Ted save the world with their music (but ya know, for real this time!). While this does sound dandy, right from the get-go classic Bill & Ted fans will realize something is amiss. Perhaps it's the low budget, or shoddy special effects; the all-too sleek visuals of the crappy CGI future that looks like a hand-me-down Apple commercial. Maybe it's the simple lack of quality jokes, or perchance director Dean Parisot just couldn't hack it and hasn't been able to hack it since Galaxy Quest, and be as it may, perhaps Bill & Ted should have just been left to its own devices as nothing more than a late 80s nostalgia machine that never should have been meddled with to make entitled 90s babies SO unreasonably upset. Then again, it could just the lack of George Carlin. 

By sending the duo, now in their 50s, on a newly prophesied mission from the future (Carlin's Rufus has been replaced by Kristen Schaal doing her best Doctor Who character), Face the Music gives Bill and Ted one last shot at showing moviegoers once and for all how these dudes evolve from air-guitar rejects to future-famous rock stars, but not before (of course) all kinds of time-travel bullshit gets in their way. From needing to write a legendary song, to securing the relationships with their royal-princess-wives (albeit the British ladies have been recast, now played by Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes), the saints of San Dimas face all kinds of literal hell, despite much of these plot points feeling like they were written on a napkin in a Wendy's bathroom. Oh, and for other reasons they're being hunted by a Power Ranger robot from the future named Dennis, riddled with cheeky one-liners, a major insecurity complex, and shoots with a ray-gun that evaporates people to Hell (the franchise needed a plot device to reintroduce the Grim Reaper. Don't worry, it doesn't need to make sense).

Once the absurdity is underway, Face the Music begins to rerun through familiar but rushed story beats of the first two films. Billie and Thea have an excellent adventure collecting famous musicians of the past in a time-traveling phone booth, while their dads have a bogus journey of their own, encountering alternate versions of themselves in the future, until they end up in Hell for a rematch with Death (kudos to William Sadler for returning to this thing). Both plot lines are genuinely heartwarming, but then Kid Cudi shows up playing himself, and there are all these cute "we are the world" moments, and by the end of it all Bill & Ted Face the Music feels like stumbling into the room during an ABC Family Original Movie fused with a SyFy channel TV-movie; cheesy morals and crappy special effects and all (the whole thing is about as precious as it sounds).
The girls are clearly having a better time than anyone else on set, as Weaving and especially Lundy-Paine play pitch perfect clones of their fathers' high-school selves (down to the mannerisms), but everyone else in the movie seems tired. Cameo-characters from the first two films will make fans smile at best, Winter does his damndest to bring back his Golden-Retriever-like charm, and Reeves just feels like he's lost, waiting for John Wick 4 to resume production and demand he grow his goddamn magnificent beard back.

Face the Music isn't terrible per se. It's actually pretty fucking sweet, and not in the "dope" way, more so in how criminally innocent and good-natured it is, to the point where it almost doesn't even feel related to the first two films. Lacking both the 80s burnout charm of Excellent Adventure, and the bizarre, punk-rock rebellion of Bogus Journey (sad to say no reprise from Station or Evil Bill & Ted this round), Face the Music feels like it was designed for kids, and not the slacker kids of 90s grunge, but for children of the iPad generation. Despite its differences, Face the Music is still another Bill & Ted movie (and most likely the last), Keanu and Alex and Will Sadler and all, but for a franchise that constantly toyed with the notion that Bill & Ted would become world famous in the future, perhaps it would have been best to leave that future up to our imaginations. 

Or be as it may, perhaps certain 90s kids best lay their sweet dreams of nostalgia to rest, grow the hell up, and just be thankful that we got another Bill & Ted movie at all.

Grade: C