Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) Review. An Excellent Adventurous Ride.

Premise: Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) is the third film in the Bill & Ted movie franchise. In its Predecessor, The excellent adventure (1989), Bill, played by Alex Winter, and Ted, played by Keanu Reeves; they travel into numerous Time periods to prepare for their history assignment. With the help of Rufus’s (George Carlin) time machine from the future. And they also learn, in the future, their song will unite the world.

Present, Bill & Ted Face The Music (2020 ), Bill and Ted are middle-aged fathers and haven’t fulfilled their destiny, still trying to write the one magical song that will solve the world’s problems and unite the universe. Rufus’ daughter Kelly (Kristen Schaal) arrives and takes Bill and Ted to her future. They meet the great leader, who tells them they have just 75 minutes to write the history-making song, if not the time and space that we know of will collapse. Stakes are high in this short time; they do not want to take risks so, both travel to the future to steal the song from the future selfs. Meanwhile, Thea (Samara Weaving), daughter of Bill and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine), daughter of Ted, with the help of Kelly, gathers music icons like Mozart, Louise Armstrong, and more from the past to help their fathers on the song.

Review: Bill & Ted an excellent adventure, a charming goofy, and sweet comedy movie with a massive fan base. It’s hard to make a perfect sequel to it, especially in this generation where every comedy movie is like a cool teenage group with one-liner jokes with no original vibe in the story. I am glad to see Face The Music brings it back the memories of dumb and dumber, Mr bean, the mask, Etc.

Face the Music doesn’t imitate or take the path of other movies to please the audience and change to present trends. It stays authentic to the characters of what they are thirty years before, which made such a cult film and achieved such a fan base. Writing of these ideocracy characters is fantastic. They are kind of mature, want to save their marriage, and take care of their daughters. Balancing their ideocracy and maturity from their age is well-balanced, well written.

Playing These types of surreal goofy characters usually, without looking dumb stoner, is hard. Keanu and Alex Winter gave an excellent performance making the audience smile. The chemistry between both is perfect as, like the first one, they brought Bill and Ted back. Speaking of actors, Alex Winter, who has been directing movies lately, the last acting role was in 1993, so he took acting lessons for this role, I like that commitment, and did a brilliant job. I was not expecting more from new actors, but surprisingly daughters played by Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine did a pretty good job. Especially, Samara Weaving, she is awesome from the start. Willan Sandler, who plays the death, is back with his fun and brilliant acting even for less screen time.

Dialogues are clever and fresh, especially I like the conversation between Bill and Ted talk to their future selves. It’s cleverly written. In excellent adventure 1979, the catchphrases became instant pop cultures like a party on dude, whoa, excellent dude, bogus, and many. Seeing some of them in this movie is awesome. I am delighted it was released at this horrible time.

Cons: instantly noticeable lousy CGI, the robot sent to kill Bill and Ted looks like it from power rangers, and there is an egg-shaped time machine. With many subplots squeezed in just 90 minutes felt, the movie bit rushed, and some unnecessary arcs easily trimmed to make the movie more enjoyable. I personally didn’t like any future scenes (the great leader’s future). They are really boring. And some of the jokes didn’t land.

Conclusion: Even though Face the Music doesn’t reach it’s predecessor, it still has some of its magic. It’s sweet, refreshing, and fun to watch Bill and Ted characters, played by amazing Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter. As Keanu said in the interview Bill and Ted bring a smile to people, it certainly did. And be excellent to each other—my rating 6.5/10.

Director: Dean Parisot
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Music, Sci-fi
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine