“Bill & Ted Face the Music” Movie Review by Josh Davis
September 6, 2020 5:38 pm |
The version of “Bill and Ted Face the Music” that audiences see this year is likely not the same version that filmmakers had hoped to deliver.
Star Keanu Reeves (Ted Theodore Logan), in a 2019 podcast interview for Variety, said the producers didn’t have “the time or the budget to tell the story the way they’d like.”
Co-writer Ed Solomon, in a 2018 Digital Spy piece, admitted there were financing issues and described an elaborate scene with a CGI George Carlin that was in the script, but had to be cut because of the high cost. Carlin, who passed away in 2008, played time traveler Rufus in the original “Bill and Ted” film and its 1991 sequel, “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.”
Director Dean Parisot, in an Aug. 27 Polygon interview, confirmed the sequence with Carlin was scrapped because filmmakers “didn’t have the time or money.” (Instead, the new film features a brief scene with a Rufus hologram).
“Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” released in 1989, had a modest $10 million budget, while the 1991 sequel reportedly cost twice that, at $20 million.
Thirty years later, “Bill and Ted Face Music” reportedly had a $25 million budget.
Money struggles aside, Reeves and costar Alex Winter (Bill S. Preston, Esq.) maintain the goofy chemistry that made the first two movies into hits.
Joining them this time around are Samara Weaving (“Ready or Not”) as Bill’s daughter, Thea, and Brigette Lundy-Paine (“Atypical”) as Ted’s daughter, Billie. Kristen Schaal (“Bob’s Burgers”) also gets in on the family act, playing Rufus’ daughter, Kelly.
The basic premise is this: Bill and Ted, now middle aged, still have yet to write the prophesied song that will unite humanity and bring about an age of peace and harmony. Their band, Wyld Stallyns, has been relegated to playing weddings and Elks lodges, and they’re both in couples’ therapy to save their marriages to the two princesses we met in the first film (now both being played by different actors).
Kelly travels back in time to warn Bill and Ted that they only have 77 minutes to write the song before reality unravels and the universe, as we know it, ends. All around them things are literally and figuratively falling apart. We see Jesus, Babe Ruth, George Washington and others zapped from their timelines.
Complicating matters is that Kelly’s mother, The Great Leader (Holland Taylor, “Two and a Half Men”), believes the prophesy is all wrong, and that existence will only survive if Bill and Ted die in the next 77 minutes. She sends an emotionally unstable robot assassin (Anthony Carrigan, “Barry”) back in time to do the job.
Bill and Ted, being the proto-slackers that they are, time travel to try and pry the song from their future selves, but instead find they’re even more washed up further into the future. They’re no help to their past (or present?) selves, but instead only offer messages of failure.
Billie and Thea, meanwhile, go backward in time to help recruit a band for their dads that includes Jimi Hendricks, Louis Armstrong and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If you have to write a great song, they think, why not get the best musicians in history?
Lundy-Paine is excellent as Billie and does a fantastic job in capturing a young, doofy Keanu Reeves. Weaving, who has been great in other recent roles, is just serviceable here.
On the other hand, Carrigan, who shined as wacky, weird characters in TV shows like “Barry” and “Gotham,” is befuddlingly bad — and annoying — as a malfunctioning robot assassin who won’t stop talking.
Much better served was the return of veteran character actor William Sadler, still hilarious as Death himself. There’s plenty of funny follow-up to his departure as the bass player for Wyld Stallyns, as seen in the “Bogus Journey” end credits.
Kid Cudi, as perhaps the first actor ever to play himself in a “Bill and Ted” movie, is unexpectedly funny as an apparent expert on the theoretical science of time travel.
Overall, though, it feels like there are fewer successful gags than in the previous two movies, and slightly fewer big laughs.
There is an epic, joyous finale and a tying up of loose ends, even if it does come off a little like the most expensive Guitar Center ad of all time.
And, like “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot,” there are emotional moments as a franchise passes the torch and beloved characters get to see their children flourish.
Ultimately, “Bill and Ted Face the Music” is funny and fun enough, if just a little underwhelming. It’s hard to shake the feeling that there was a better, bigger, wilder (wylder?) romp of a movie that had to be pared down because of budget constraints.
Reeves and Winter are still extremely likable as big-hearted California dimwits who dream of their band becoming rich and famous, and there’s enough to keep longtime fans interested in this third chapter. A rewatch of the first two movies beforehand also doesn’t hurt.
It might not save the world and help unify all humankind, but “Bill and Ted Face the Music” is a good enough way to finish off a goofy trilogy about two kids from San Dimas who believe in the healing power of rock and roll.
PCL Rating: Taste It
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH 🍅
Tags: Bill & Ted Face The Music, Bill and Ted 3, Bill and Ted Face the Music 2020, movie review, Pop Culture Leftovrers
Categorised in: Movie Reviews
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