Bill & Ted: Face The Music: Film Review

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Samara Weaving, Bridget Lundy-Paine, William Sadler

Director: Dean Parisot

More uneven than a fully formed coherent journey, Bill & Ted: Face The Music sees Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves reprise their William S Preston and Theodore Logan roles, nearly 30 years since we last saw them.

It's 2020, and Bill and Ted are still living in the shadow and fear of their legacy. But the airheads are just about still married to their wives and have two daughters (Weaving and Lundy-Paine, a great source of vacant-headed energy throughout and the breakout stars of this, potentially setting up a new franchise) as the world starts to fall apart.

Unable to write the prophesied song that will unite the world, and with reality collapsing in on themselves, Bill and Ted are visited by Kelly, Rufus' daughter and told they have a deadline to sort the music or it's all over.

So, the boys decide to go into the future to steal the song from themselves...

It may start off a little ropy, thanks to the feeling that Reeves is struggling a bit to recapture some of the lunk-headed nature of his younger self, but once Bill & Ted: Face The Music settles in, there's a great deal of charisma to be had from seeing this duo back together and interacting with various future versions of themselves.

There's a lack of comedy throughout, and it misses the knockabout charm of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (a reunion with William Sadler's never-not-funny Death happens too late in the piece); a sub-plot sees Bill and Ted's daughters Billie and Thea essentially doing a musical journey a la Excellent Adventure's history quest, and there is a general feeling that it could have used a more knockabout approach to a fan service script.

Whereas Reeves seems to be struggling to get the tone and intonation of the wholesomely goofy and enthusiastic Ted (he even says at one point to Bill that he's "tired, dude"), Winter effortlessly slips back into Bill and even offers a few subtle spins on the character as the story pans out. It's here Bill & Ted Face The Music finds its emotional core, and even dances lightly around the nostalgia of its franchise - there's a sweetness (and sadness) to these two friends never quite growing up and reaching their potential, and the script rightly recognises that fact.

Generally, Bill & Ted: Face The Music is more adequate than excellent, but when it comes together in the last 20 minutes, it really does leave an undeniably goofy grin on your face. But it also does demonstrate that given a tighter script polish, and a bit more of a humorous edge, Bill & Ted: Face The Music could have been another time-travel cult classic.

As it is, it's perhaps the film 2020 needs right now - but thanks to the unevenness not quite the one we were expecting from the dudes.