A Review of "Bill & Ted Face the Music"

"Greetings, my excellent friends." "Woah, Rufus... you've changed."

Well it's been two weeks since Bill & Ted Face the Music, the third edition in the Bill & Ted franchise, was released in select theaters and over on-demand services. I've watched and let it resonate with me for a while so I could really absorb what I thought about it. I won't take up too much of your time here today. There's not really much for us to go over. We've already covered Bill and Ted's excellent adventure through time and their bogus journey to the afterlife... and now, we'll watch them face the music, or in this case, the monotony of middle age while struggling to cope with the fact they haven't yet done what they were destined to do. So let's go ahead and dive right into the third... and perhaps final... Bill & Ted film and figure out if the third one is just as memorable and funny as the first two... or if it fell flat on its butt and tarnished the legacy. This is Bill & Ted Face the Music: A movie that teaches us we don't have to fear middle age and the changes it brings to our lives as long as we stay true to ourselves and never lose sight of what we were put on this Earth. I sense I've read too much into that... but hey, it's the plot of the movie, so it works.

Also known as Bill & Ted: The Next Generation

In 2020, twenty-nine years after they rocked the Battle of the Bands in San Dimas and vanquished the Evil Bill & Ted Robots from the future, Bill Preston (Alex Winter) and Ted Logan (Keanu Reeves) have failed to write a prophesied song to unite the world, and time and space are beginning to collapse. Their wives are unhappy and Ted confides in Bill that he does not believe they will ever write the song. Their adventure begins once again when Kelly (Wendy Schaal), the daughter of Bill and Ted's deceased time-travelling guide Rufus, arrives to take them to the future for another counsel with the Future Elders. They meet Kelly's mother, the Great Leader (Holland Taylor), who tells them that they have until 7:17 p.m. that night to write the song or reality will collapse. Realizing they will not be able to write the song in time, Bill and Ted use Rufus's time-traveling phone booth he originally brought to 1989 San Dimas to steal the song from their future selves so that they can get credit for writing it. However, their future selves are unsuccessful and their wives have left them; they blame their past selves for their failures.

"Alright, now; who wants to become our totally excellent
prison bitch?"

Now obviously, this raises some serious questions in time travel logic, something I'm very prone to nitpicking. If this movie follows Back to the Future rules, which to me, seem to be the most logical of illogical time traveling rules brought to us by the silver screen; if the future Bill & Ted also have not written the song, it means that the future should not be how it is presented... right? Well, there's a certain twist coming that may or may not explain that.

With Bill and Ted missing, the Great Leader sends a time-traveling robot named Dennis Caleb McCoy (Anthony Carrigan) to kill them, hoping this will restore balance to the universe. Kelly travels back to the present to warn them, but instead meets their daughters, Billie Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea Preston (Samara Weaving), who decide to help their fathers create the song. What I like about this is while Bill and Ted are off having an original adventure of sorts, Billie and Thea go out and have a sort-of-rehash adventure of Excellent Adventure, where the mission was to time travel and gather historical figures. Using Kelly's time machine, Billie and Thea recruit musicians Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still), Louis Armstrong (Jeremiah Craft), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Daniel Door), Ling Lun (Sharon Gee), and Grom (Patty Anne Miller), a drummer from before recorded history. Bill and Ted, meanwhile, travel to 2025, where they have seemingly become successful. However, they are tricked by their future counterparts, who try to pass off a song by Dave Grohl (Played by Dave Grohl... in quite an acting performance, I must say) as their own. Billie, Thea, and their band return to the present to meet up with Kelly and a time-displaced Kid Cudi (Played oddly enough by Kid Cudi... also a real dynamite performance here), but Dennis kills them and sends them to Hell.

For her commitment to the Charlie Sheen-less years on Two
and a Half Men, Holland Taylor was granted the right to
become the Great Leader of the Universe

Bill and Ted, meanwhile, still having no luck in finding their future selves that wrote the song, travel to 2067 and find their elderly future selves on their deathbeds. The elder Bill and Ted give their younger selves a USB drive containing the fabled song written by "Preston / Logan", stating that it must be performed at 7:17 PM at "MP 46". Dennis Caleb McCoy appears, but stands down upon learning they have the song, and regretfully informs them that he has killed their daughters. In regret for doing so, he turns his weapon on himself, but Bill and Ted throw themselves in the way of the beam, hoping to find their daughters. All three are sent to Hell. Bill and Ted locate their daughters and the band, and settle their differences with their old bandmate Death (William Sadler) to return everyone alive to the present. I was so happy to see Death come back, he was honestly arguably the best part of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, and it was so nice to see him come back and play in the movie one last time.

The group arrive on Interstate 210 at the MP 46 marker, just as reality is collapsing. When Bill and Ted lament that they still don't have the song ready that will unite the world, they come to realize that the "Preston / Logan" on the USB drive refers to Billie and Thea, and that the song must be performed by everyone across time and space. They are joined by their wives, who have realized they are happiest in this dimension. The four use Rufus's phone booth to create copies of themselves across time and space, handing instruments to everyone who ever lived. Everyone across reality performs the song together, with Billie and Thea producing, while Bill and Ted lead the band on guitar. The universe is repaired and everyone returns to their proper time periods.

Have I mentioned how happy I was for Death to
come back?

In short, Bill & Ted Face the Music is a worthy ending to the trilogy. Honestly though, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say that the movie still did feel like the ending was a bit rushed, and that Bill and Ted, Billie and Thea, and the historical figures... and Death... really kind of quickly just showed up together, threw a bunch of music at the screen and the writers called it good there. The song they jam with each other on in front of the whole world now feels no more definitive than the Steve Vai/Kiss rendition of "God Gave Rock n' Roll To You II" at the end of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. The character elements were in tune with the first two films, it felt like time stood still watching this movie. Almost like twenty-nine years had not just flown by between sequels. It was so trippy to sit here and watch these characters that I've come to love so much play out one last adventure.

"Ted?" "What?" "We're not in San Dimas anymore"
"Woof, dude" *Air guitars*

Still, while it is in Bill & Ted movie nature to play fast-and-loose with the time travel rules, this movie seems to have gotten carried away. For one thing, making infinite copies of themselves to distribute guitars and other instruments to people all over the world in every era in time was a bit of a stretch to accept in the last... I don't know... three minutes. Also the future Bill and Ted never remembering their previous encounters with their past selves through their... uh... I guess other past selves... also was a bid of a headache.

Though, perhaps I'm judging the movie too harshly. During all this pandemic business, Bill & Ted Face the Music was a movie we definitely needed, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't well up by the end seeing two of my favorite characters one the screen one last time. While not without its obviously, sometimes intentionally comedic flaws, Bill & Ted Face the Music is a triumphant return to form. The characters were memorable, I loved the dual plotlines of both a semi-original time-travelling quest adventure as well as a redo of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure featuring their daughters. Dennis Caleb McCoy was a new, freshly hilarious character entry. I loved the new "Missy marries somebody" gag, and the fact that Hal Landon Jr. came back for another round as Capt. Jonathan Logan, Ted and Deacon's dad. Plus... I said it before and I'll say it again... Death was a surefire welcome to have back as well.

If you love the Bill & Ted movies, you'll love Bill & Ted Face the Music.