Bill and Ted debuted in 1989 with their Bogus Journey
following up in 1991. The story was fairly straightforward: two slackers are visited
by a man from the future who tells them they need to pass their history test
because in the future their band will write a song that saves the world. If
they fail the history test, Ted’s father will send him to military school, breaking
up the band, thus depriving the world of the song. Together, they use a time machine phone booth
to travel through time, collecting historical folks to bring them forward to
San Dimas, California to participate in their history report.
As insane as that sounds, the movie is plenty of silly fun with some scene-stealing turns from Genghis Khan, Billy the Kid, Socrates, Joan of Arc (who is not Noah’s wife), Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Abraham Lincoln, and of course, Napoleon. The sequel followed the two as they got killed and had to beat Death at a series of games in order to come back and save their wives and existences. William Sadler’s Death steals every scene he’s in.
Now, it’s 30 years later, Bill and Ted are middle aged with
slacker teenage daughters and have still not written the song. They are visited again from the future and informed
if the song is not written by that evening, space time collapses into itself. Having spent the last 30 years trying, Bill
and Ted instead time hop to the future to check in with their future selves
periodically to take the song after they’ve written it. In the meantime, their
daughters go back in time to build the ultimate band to perform said song.
The movie is plenty of silly and really is bolstered by the perfect chemistry between Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves. They genuinely love each other, and that certainly comes across. Face the Music is directed by Dean Parisot, who also directed Galaxy Quest and RED 2 along with multiple TV episodes. The writers, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon came up with this story nearly ten years ago. It has taken this long to get everything aligned perfectly. It may not work on every level, but if you have a special place in your heart for the first one, this one feels like a warm hug.
Alex and Keanu have remained friends, helping each other out in various projects and in general hanging out. The idea that Bill and Ted are still together, still struggling as a band, and live next door to one another makes sense – even to the point that they go to couples counseling together with their wives. They are fun to watch together, and I enjoyed how much fun they are having playing different future versions of themselves.
Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine join as Thea and
Billie – the daughters of the pair, they essentially do impressions of Bill and
Ted from the first movie, which works just fine here.
Erinn Hayes and Jayma Mays take over playing the princesses in this version, and while still in love with Bill and Ted, they are beginning to grow tired of the general lack of progress they’ve made.
Hal Landon Jr. returns as Chief Logan, Ted’s still angry dad and Amy Stock returns as Missy a character who started as Bill’s step mom, then became Ted’s stepmom and now in this one is marrying Beck Bennett’s Deacon, Ted’s little brother. Kid Cudi shows up as Kid Cudi, which is very entertaining.
Overall, the movie is not perfect, but it is plenty of silly fun, which honestly – we all need right now. I do wish there was a little more of the girls pulling famous musicians from history. They only grab a couple and they don’t get a ton to do. To better parallel the original, I do wish those musicians had at least one scene showing them interacting and getting to know one another. As it is, I do enjoy the bits of Jimi Hendrix and Louis Armstrong and Mozart, I just want more.
6 out of 10 – not totally excellent, but certainly not
bogus.
No comments:
Post a Comment