“Bill & Ted Face the Music” sounds like more of an account than it is. It would be unbearable to think that William Preston and Theodore Logan, the goofballs first embodied by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves more than 30 years ago, could be candidates for cancellation. And although they may be longer in the tooth and heavier in the yoke than they were – as so many of us are – the dudes retain their essential innocence. They are still friendly avatars of non-toxic masculinity. No serious crimes come back from their various time travels that demand judgment in the harsh light of the present.
That is not to say that all abomination is banished. That was the promised outcome of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) – the second of the previous ‘Bill & Ted’ films – which ended on a high note of rock ‘n’ roll utopianism. The universe was united in song and the future was secure. Somehow it has not worked that way, either on a personal or cosmic level.
Bill and Ted’s band, Wild Stallyns (pronounced “wild stallions” for all you boomers and millennials missing for the first time), has hit the skids, as well as the boys’ weddings. Their wives, Joanna (Jayma Mays) and Elizabeth (Erinn Hayes), serenely patient medieval English princesses, seek out boys’ therapy, in which the obscure men appear together.
That unbreakable bro bond is one problem. Others are the boys’ lingering ambitions and a stubborn and implicit denial of adulthood. Although this arrested development frustrates Joanna and Elizabeth, it seems to be Bill and Ted named after their daughters, Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving), shiny millennial apples that fell not far from the Gen X tree .
These young women, who speak of each other as “guys”, may be better musicians than their fathers. In any case, they start with a broader cultural frame of reference. And when a broadcaster from the future shows up with an outrageous warning – it’s Kristen Schaal, more or less filling George Carlin’s shoes – the younger B. and T. are sent into the past to recruit musical geniuses, while the older ones are driven forward trying to get their action together.
I do not want to explain too much about science as the metaphysics of travel. It’s all clearly spelled and no one makes so much of it. I will note that “Bill & Ted Face the Music” adapts to changes in both musical taste and time travel mechanics. Rock (now known as dad rock) is not the universal solvent it once seemed to be, and chronological displacement is no longer a simple linear matter. Now there must be multiple timelines and increasingly complex models of contingency. Bill and Ted may not fully understand it. The screenwriters, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, cannot either. But it does not really matter.
In the annals of the late 20th century dim-dude comedy, Bill and Ted occupy a special place. Beavis and Butt-Head were abrasively satirical. Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar lived in a fully realized social landscape. But Bill and Ted had more fun – going through the ages, meeting Freud and Socrates (whose names they both mispronounced) and deriving a transcendent simple few lessons from their historical journeys: “Be excellent with each other. Party up.”
Was it enough? Of course not. Bill and Ted belong to a generation so closely identified with failure that they are routinely erased from the record. The new film, directed by Dean Parisot, is a friendly, sloppy attempt to reaffirm the value of kindness and crack a few jokes along the way. Wild Stallyns bassist Death (Bill Sadler) delivers many of these, including a neurotic murder robot named Dennis (Anthony Carrigan).
Various historical figures appear, especially a supergroup recruited by Billie and Thea from ancient China and Africa, such as less ancient Vienna and New Orleans. Great musicians are needed to save reality from falling into themselves. The highlight of the film is a harpsichord and Stratocaster duet played by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Jimi Hendrix, a beautifully thought out and executed demonstration of how genius recognizes genius.
That’s too strong a word to fit for “Bill & Ted Face the Music”, which like its predecessors is downright modest and harmlessly stupid. I do not know if it made me young or old, but it was all a very not false experience.
Bill & Ted Face of Music
Rated PG-13. Mild horror. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. Play in selected theaters. Rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies in theaters.
