Tag: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

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!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY (1991) ***1/2

A great supporting character can elevate a movie.

Take, for example, the Grim Reaper from BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY. I mean, it’s not every day that a supposedly lowbrow comedy puts a novel spin on a character and plot thread from Ingmar Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL.

In that one, you might remember a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) plays a game of chess against a personification of Death (Bengt Ekerot) to prolong his life. The mere image of the knight and Death playing chess by the sea had become one of the most revered in movie history by the time BOGUS JOURNEY director Peter Hewitt, writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, and Grim Reaper player William Sadler, as well as co-stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, got their grubby little mitts on it.

In BOGUS JOURNEY, our two most excellent dudes Bill S. Preston Esquire (Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Reeves) find themselves in a most hellish predicament. They are killed by evil robot Bill & Teds, called the Evil Robot Usses by our poetic lead characters, and wind up in Hell. What else would happen to a pair of heavy metal fans? Bill & Ted, who quickly discover their album covers lied to them, man, are greeted by Granny Preston, an evil Easter Bunny, Colonel Oats, and eternal boot camp, a plight highlighted by infinity push-ups and verbal abuse, in their own personal Hell. Colonel Oats tells Bill & Ted they are silky boys and silk comes from the butts of Chinese worms.

Back to the Grim Reaper. “How’s it hanging, Death?” asks Ted.

Bill & Ted play The Reaper dude in a series of games, including Battleship, Clue, and Twister, because Death is a sore loser and Bill & Ted must win two out of three or was that three out of five. Nah, believe it’s best five out of seven. The Reaper finally relents, “I will take you back.”

Bill & Ted are the first to ever beat The Reaper, and before that the first to melvin him. “Ted, don’t fear the reaper.” Cue them celestial cowbells.

I love just about everything about the Grim Reaper in BOGUS JOURNEY and he contributes to BOGUS JOURNEY being a step up from EXCELLENT ADVENTURE.

Sadler should have been at least nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance here. No, instead, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saw fit to nominate Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley from BUGSY, Michael Lerner from BARTON FINK, Tommy Lee Jones from JFK, and winner Jack Palance from CITY SLICKERS. Keitel and Kingsley should have faced off against Sadler in a best-of-seven to see if we could get one less nomination for BUGSY. Colonel Oats would certainly have approved of Palance’s victory with his celebratory one-armed push-ups.

EXCELLENT ADVENTURE takes on time travel, historical figures, and historical fiction. Bill & Ted need to earn an A+ on their final report in history … and the future of the human race hangs in the balance. Literally, because in a mere 700 years in the future, humanity exists in an utopia built around the music of the Wyld Stallions, Bill & Ted’s most excellent rock band.

BOGUS JOURNEY adds depictions of the afterlife, Heaven, and Hell to the mix, and it gives us good and evil robot Bill & Teds in addition to living and dead Bill & Teds. Winter and Reeves compete with Michael J. Fox and Thomas F. Wilson for most permutations in a time travel comedy. Peter Sellers and Tony Randall would have been proud of all of them.

Additionally, the universe’s most brilliant scientific genius uses a single word vocabulary and that’s his name, Station. Station builds the “good robot usses” or “Station’s creations.”

I should not forget Joss Ackland as arch villain Chuck DeNomolos, who programs the evil robots to kill the good Bill & Ted because he hates their ideas and their insipid music. Don’t feel too bad for Chuck, because he gets a shot with Missy. Doesn’t just about everybody?

In the end, though, remember “You might be a king or a street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper.”

That and, of course, “Be excellent to each other.”