Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC (2020) ***

What the world needs more than ever before is Bill S. Preston Esquire and Ted “Theodore” Logan, characters played respectively by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves who live by the credo “Be excellent to each other.”

Yes, we could all use a little more being excellent to each other right about now.

They are back in BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC, the third entry in a series that began way before Cardi B. (born 1992) and Megan Thee Stallion (born 1995), the Internet boom, widespread cell phones, and COVID … and if a time traveler from 2020 told you in 1989 or 1991 that one day Donald Trump would be your President you’d react about just like 1955 Emmett “Doc” Brown did when Marty McFly told him Ronald Reagan was President in 1985.

I know what some of you might be thinking: Why does the world need another dumb comedy starring two dim-witted characters who have not been seen on a movie screen for 29 years … more than Christopher Nolan’s TENET, the film already considered 2020’s most anticipated theatrical release during a time of much uncertainty for the future of movie theaters and movies in general.

For one, I have never believed the Bill & Ted characters to be dumb and their movies are definitely not dumb. Those who believe that Bill & Ted (and their movies) are dumb are perhaps easily distracted by a vernacular featuring such words as “dude,” “bogus,” “non-heinous,” and “excellent” or their frequent air guitar pyrotechnics.

Also, Bill & Ted were flunking history in EXCELLENT ADVENTURE and surely that did not help their cause, but so what, I mean I wish I had a dollar for every time somebody told me “History’s boring, man, but I do love watching me some History Channel.” I’d have amassed a small fortune.

Bill & Ted, first and foremost, are positive and upbeat without being a preachy drag or becoming simps, and that’s a tricky feat to pull off. They are two of the most likeable characters in film history, a fact made apparent once again by their return in FACE THE MUSIC.

Secondly, I have enjoyed the first two Bill & Ted movies more than I have anything by Christopher Nolan. That’s not saying EXCELLENT ADVENTURE and BOGUS JOURNEY are better than INTERSTELLAR and DUNKIRK, for example, or MEMENTO and THE DARK KNIGHT, for that matter. It’s not much of an understatement, though, when I state I must have watched EXCELLENT ADVENTURE and BOGUS JOURNEY 100 times when they played on cable TV in the early ’90s.

FACE THE MUSIC won me over almost right from the start, when wedding singers Bill & Ted (no longer rock stars) introduce their latest epic “That Which Binds Us Through Time: The Chemical, Physical and Biological Nature of Love; an Exploration of The Meaning of Meaning, Part 1.” Rick Wakeman, eat your heart out!

Just before that number, though, FACE THE MUSIC revisits a running joke from their prior movies. Missy, who’s three years older than Bill & Ted, married Bill’s dad in EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, Ted’s dad in BOGUS JOURNEY (Bill’s dad took it really hard), and now Ted’s younger brother Deacon in FACE THE MUSIC. Just think Bill & Ted each asked her to the prom when they were freshmen and she was a senior. When it is suggested that Ted’s father is now his own son, I sensed a disturbance in the force in my wife seated to my immediate right. I looked over at her and she was in deep thought. I laughed to myself.

FACE THE MUSIC introduces several new characters and they’re mostly winners.

Let’s see, we have Theodora “Thea” Preston (Samara Weaving) and Wilhelmina “Billie” Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine), Bill & Ted’s daughters. They are music lovers and they share a chemistry and bond just like their fathers. They are every bit as endearing as Bill & Ted.

There’s a scene-stealing robot (Anthony Carrigan) from hundreds of years in the future who’s sent to kill Bill & Ted. We eventually learn his full name.

We also have Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still), Louis Armstrong (Jeremiah Craft), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Daniel Dorr), and legendary founder of music Ling Lun (Sharon Gee) given a gender switch. Possessing two college degrees in history, I have always loved the Bill & Ted movies for their astonishing historical accuracy.

FACE THE MUSIC incorporates basic plot elements from both EXCELLENT ADVENTURE and BOGUS JOURNEY. Facing a major deadline crunch to finally write the song to save the world, Bill & Ted are back in their H.G. Wells phone booth to visit their future selves and steal the song from themselves. Can they do that? I mean, it’s not really stealing if you “steal” from yourself, right? I laughed at this plot development, because I thought about how John Fogerty got sued by his former record company for ripping himself off.

Bill & Ted visit at least four different future self permutations, highlighted by a tender scene in 2067 with a geriatric Bill & a geriatric Ted. Just like BACK TO THE FUTURE PART 2 and EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, FACE THE MUSIC flat out embraces the silliness of time-travel. Unlike the BACK TO THE FUTURE series, the Bill & Ted movies do not concern themselves with paradoxes or plot loopholes, for that matter. They (and we) are having too much fun.

Thea & Billie take on a similar role as their fathers in EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, as they travel through time to recruit the all-time ultimate band to play their fathers’ song.

Like BOGUS JOURNEY, we descend into Hell, because Bill & Ted need to get their daughters, Ted’s dad, and Hendrix, Armstrong, et cetera, as well as killer bass player Grim Reaper (William Sadler), to round out the band. Nearly 30 years later, this character and the way Sadler plays him remain a hoot. I only wish they would have got to him a little sooner, despite the fact FACE THE MUSIC plugs the killer robot into the role served by the Reaper in BOGUS JOURNEY.

There are numerous other faults in FACE THE MUSIC (including Reeves’ sometimes obvious discomfort playing Ted), but, in the end, they’re smoothed over by the genial spirit of the enterprise. BOGUS JOURNEY remains the best entry in the series, because of its darker sense of humor and inspired production design in places like Heaven and Hell … and it features limited time-travel.

Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon wrote all three Bill & Ted movies and they originated the characters in a Hollywood improv shop in 1983. Matheson (son of the science fiction writer Richard Matheson) and Solomon make “stupid” cameos in each film, waiters in EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, seance members in BOGUS JOURNEY, and demons in FACE THE MUSIC. Matheson and Solomon, Winter and Reeves, and Sadler and Hal Landon Jr. (Ted’s perpetually disapproving father) help FACE THE MUSIC become more a labor-of-love than cynical cash grab.

I left FACE THE MUSIC with a goofy smile on my face and a burning desire to get in the car and blare some music. I rocked out to a playlist that started with Pink Floyd’s “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane,” and AC/DC’s “Let There Be Rock.” Yes, what a wonderful world!