Bill & Ted Face The Music: A Warm Dose Of Nostalgic Medicine
After 29 long years, Bill & Ted are back, and they’ve returned in time to deliver a warm, uplifting dose of nostalgic medicine right when the world needs it most! Their zany final adventure adds some most excellent new components to the familiar to bring a fitting close to this bodacious series that the whole family can enjoy.
Once told they'd save the universe during a time-traveling adventure, two would-be rockers from San Dimas, California find themselves as middle-aged dads still trying to crank out a hit song and fulfill their destiny.
The last time we saw Bill & Ted was back in 1991’s Bogus Journey, where they won the San Dimas Battle of the Bands and allegedly united the world with their rock ballad “Those Who Rock.” However, their success was most untriumhpant, and with Face the Music, we’re introduced to a modern day Bill & Ted who have struggled for years to write the prophesied song. Their failure brings on the biggest stakes the franchise has ever seen; not only do Bill & Ted need to race against the clock to write the song before time and space collapse, but they’ve also got to battle their growing self-doubt and repair their crumbling relationship with their wives, the princesses.
Luckily, they have their daughters, Billie & Thea (played pitch-perfectly by Brigette Lundy-Paine and Samara Weaving), to help them out. As Bill & Ted travel into the future in a last-ditch effort to steal the songs from themselves, Billie & Thea head into the past to assemble an epic backing band for their dads, comprised of Jimi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ling Lun, Grom (a drummer from before recorded history), and Kid Cudi. After taking a detour to Hell, where Bill & Ted mend their relationship with Death (reprised by William Sadler), all stories converge in the present as they attempt to unite the world one last time, but can they pull it off or will all of time and space collapse?!
One of the great things about Face the Music is how it bridges the time gap between it and Bogus Journey. No distance can be felt; it’s as if we’ve never left Bill & Ted’s radiant and glorious dumbness. Winters and Reeves have no difficulty slipping back into their dimwitted, surfer-bro counterparts, and most important of all, they have a blast being back in the saddle again. Face the Music’s hilariously silly journey into the future allows Winters and Reeves to have a lot of fun embodying their future selves, in all their fat and muscle suited glory. Winters in particular shines extremely bright in his reprisal of Bill Preston, Esq., with Reeves stealing most of the scenes with their future selves.
Bill & Ted creators and screenwriters Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson have a firm pulse on what fans want out of a Bill & Ted film, and they succeed in crafting a third entry that delivers the goods while offering a somewhat satisfying conclusion to the series. Solomon and Matheson give the franchise some nice modern vitality by adding Bill & Ted’s daughters into the mix, and in many ways, it’s a passing of the baton from one generation to the next. However, what is perhaps most refreshing is how the wholesome and optimistic the film is. Just like with 2017’s Brigsby Bear, there’s not a cynical note in Face the Music, and at its heart, it carries with it an important message of love and unity — which is exactly what the world needs right now.
Just like with every Bill & Ted film, its logic becomes flimsier and flimsier the more you think about it, but Face the Music embraces the franchise’s dumbness in a fun, family-friendly way, and it’s sure to plant a big dumb grin on your face as it melts away the worries of the outside world. Director Dean Parisot captures the right feel and tone to make Face the Music a cohesive conclusion to the Bill & Ted franchise, and while it’s not a perfect film (which none of the Bill & Ted films are), it’s a most excellent Bill & Ted sequel that gives new meaning to the phrase: "Be excellent to each other.”
Recommendation: If you’re a fan of Bill & Ted or looking for a silly, uplifting comedy to cure these troubled times, look no further than Bill & Ted Face The Music.
Rating: 3.5 positive mantras outta 5.
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