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Bill & Ted Face the Music is Totally Not Heinous, Dudes!


Bill & Ted Face the Music didn’t have to be made. That can be fairly said of a lot of sequels, especially ones coming after such a long passage of time; but this movie in particular didn’t have to be made. Bill & Ted, though it enjoyed popularity in its heyday, was never a major movie series. It doesn’t have a terribly sustained fanbase nearly thirty years after Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and nobody was particularly clamoring for this franchise to be revitalized. Except for Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. And writers Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson. They had been developing a third Bill & Ted movie for years, even had a script ready, they were just waiting for investors. And then John Wick came out, re-cementing Reeves as a major star, and finally they were able to get it off the ground.
What’s particularly interesting about all this is that the Bill & Ted movies represent for Reeves his early film career, where a dimwitted character like Ted Theodore Logan cast a shadow over his celebrity persona and attempts to branch out as an actor. There is no reason for him to want to return to this role, and yet he does. He and Winter and Solomon and Matheson all really do, and that love of the property and the characters is a key component in the films’ success. However, even they perhaps were not able to predict the other: the fact that the world kind of needs Bill and Ted right now, and Face the Music is just the perfect distillation of their pure-hearted, optimistic spirit and lovable goofiness.
Reeves and Winter have not lost an ounce of their chemistry or their grasp on these two doofus slackers of San Dimas, California in the near thirty years since they last played them. Winter especially is impressive, given how long it’s been since he last acted. They slip into the parts naturally and are clearly having so much fun being these characters again. And the characters have nicely evolved without really evolving at all. Middle-aged Bill S. Preston Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan are has-beens now, still struggling to write the song fated to unite humanity. They’ve got a bit of world-weariness on them now, are less confident, but still as exuberant, and energized and open to everything as they’ve always been. Here they’re given a ticking clock by the future though; the stakes have never been higher yet they have no ideas. So they conspire to use their old time-travelling phone booth to steal the song from themselves in the future.
This is easily the most narratively complex Bill & Ted movie, because in addition to this main plot is a thread about their relationships to their wives (who fans will remember are medieval princesses), and a subplot revolving around their daughters Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving) helping their dads out by essentially going on their own Excellent Adventure to pluck musicians out of history. There’s an overarching threat of reality collapsing in on itself and another robot sent on a mission to kill Bill and Ted as well. Face the Music doesn’t need all of these elements, and the robot in particular turns into a plot device more than anything, but I can’t begrudge their inclusions too much when Matheson, Solomon and Galaxy Quest director Dean Parisot are so earnest about it all. This is a movie that went to the trouble of bringing back cast members it didn’t necessarily need to and giving them as much to do as newer additions like Kristen Schaal (who essentially exists just to pay tribute to George Carlin) and Beck Bennett. Of course the greatest delight of these choices is seeing William Sadler back as Death, the indisputable scene stealer and hilarious Seventh Seal riff in Bogus Journey.
Face the Music affectionately pays homage to both earlier movies but never feels like it’s running on repeat or is out of ideas. It takes itself more seriously than its’ predecessors, but not to the comedy’s detriment -it still manages to be wild and really funny, especially with what it puts Reeves and Winter through. But perhaps the greatest asset is that Face the Music finally understands its’ title characters and why audiences like them so much. The original movies, sometimes inaccurately labeled ‘stoner comedies’, played Bill and Ted off as well-meaning but dopey and incredibly naive teens. They had a wide-eyed innocence to them and an open acceptance of any given situation or character they might cross. Back in 1988, this was part of the joke. In 2020, Solomon, Matheson, Reeves, and Winter realize it makes them kind of these weird role models. In dispensing with the few  character traits that don’t hold up and honing in on their near superhuman capacity for goodness and their love of life, the film situates Bill and Ted as beacons to aspire to, and re-contextualizes their goofy catchphrase for the noble philosophy it always was (also their weird bond has become a good model of lasting male friendship). Nowhere is this better represented than in their daughters, whom Lundy-Paine and Weaving imbue with the same virtues -not to mention an applicable degree of charm and humour- but with greater intelligence. And if you thought that Bill and Ted’s attitudes and personalities were products of their time, this movie proves otherwise as Billie and Thea feel in no way anachronistic.
Because of all this, it comes as no surprise that the movie would have an unreasonable faith in humanity, and interestingly enough, the universality of artistry. It truly believes the world can come together, and honestly I miss that kind of optimism. The way its’ climax plays out is especially sweet and hopeful and just a little bit corny -predictable from its’ earliest beats. A finale that is unabashedly joyous in a time when joy is in short supply.
That is the catharsis that Bill & Ted Face the Music provides, as well as just a damn entertaining time at the movies. I understand why everyone involved was so committed and so thrilled by it. Certainly it’s wonderful to see Reeves cut loose again after years of mostly serious parts and wear a false beard or a hefty gut for laughs. And it makes me kind of want to see Winter come back to acting too. Most of all though, it puts you in a good mood; and as it posits for an hour and a half that two middle-aged white dudes have it in themselves to unite the world through song, you come to believe it is possible -if we all would only listen to them and be excellent to each other!

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