by Lynn Lee
Until a couple of weeks ago I had never seen any of the Bill & Ted movies, despite being a late Gen-Xer and longstanding fan of Keanu Reeves. Now, having watched all three in a row, I can confirm most triumphantly that if you enjoyed the first two, you will have a bodacious time watching the third. If you’re a Bill & Ted-curious newcomer, I recommend giving Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure a whirl first and seeing if you dig its vibe. If not, the latest installment, Bill & Ted Face the Music, probably won’t do anything for you.
For me, getting a crash course in Bill & Ted three decades after their debut was a pleasantly surreal experience. Not that they were total strangers to me; any adolescent with any exposure to pop culture in the ’90s had at least some familiarity with the amiably vacuous duo, their iconic SoCal-inflected catchphrases, and their penchant for spontaneous air guitar in response to anything that pleased them. But seeing them in their original context felt like jumping into their rickety phone booth and traveling back to a more innocent time – for both me and them...
Excellent Adventure (1989)
In retrospect, it’s pretty amazing that Bill & Ted’s first adventure got greenlit in the first place. What would today’s studio execs have made of a movie that’s not a satire with the premise of two empty-headed teenagers who talk like they’re perpetually stoned and can’t really play guitar being destined to write music that will bring harmony to the universe? Or a plot that consists of these teens collecting a random assortment of historical figures across time for a presentation that will allow them to pass their history class? Goofy and freewheeling, Excellent Adventure is the kind of movie that quickly dries up the viewer’s impulse to ask any questions beginning “But how…” or “But why…” as it progresses. Either you roll with its absurdities – whether it’s Napoleon’s newly discovered passion for water parks or Joan of Arc’s for aerobics – or you check out. What holds it all together is the ebullient chemistry between Keanu (as Ted) and Alex Winter (as Bill). There’s something irresistible about their irrepressibly sunny good nature and the simple sweetness of their mantra ("Be excellent to each other") that keeps you invested in their success.
Bogus Journey (1991)
That goodwill also carries the sequel, although Bogus Journey was darker and trippier than I was expecting, between the jarring moral ugliness of Bill & Ted’s evil robot doubles and the utter weirdness of their savior, an alien called “Station” that looks like something extracted from Jim Henson’s nightmares. If Excellent Adventure played like a daydream born from a pot-induced haze, Bogus Journey felt more like a bad acid trip, albeit boosted by higher production values and one truly inspired narrative addition: a comic riff on The Seventh Seal featuring William Sadler as Death. In many ways, Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey reflect the cultural shift from the ’80s to the ’90s, with Bill and Ted marking the midpoint between the confused but earnest teens of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Back to the Future and metalhead slackers like Wayne & Garth (who technically preceded Bill & Ted, but whose movies followed them) and the nastier but even funnier Beavis & Butthead.
Face the Music (2020)
Against all odds, Face the Music slips remarkably comfortably into the Bill & Ted canon, courtesy of the same writers (Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon) who wrote the first two movies. In this iteration Bill and Ted, like so many of us, have reached middle age without fulfilling the dreams of their youth. In a bit of retconning of the end of Bogus Journey (or at least the end credits of Bogus Journey, which suggested the pair reached galactic levels of fame and fortune), this Bill and Ted turn out to be a one-hit wonder whose one hit was not the song that united the world, and who ultimately faded into lounge-act obscurity while still trying and failing to write The Song. The good news is that they’re still best buds, they’re still married to the beautiful princesses (Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes, making the third set of actresses to play the princesses) they picked up in Excellent Adventure, and they each have a daughter (Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine) much brighter than themselves who nonetheless share their passion for rock music and look up to them as heroes. Then one day, a messenger from the future – specifically, the daughter (Kristen Schaal) of their old friend and late mentor Rufus (R.I.P. George Carlin) – arrives to remind them of their destiny and inform them that if they don’t write and perform The Song by that evening, the entire universe and all space & time will collapse in on itself. No pressure or anything, dudes!
While Bill and Ted travel into the future to find older versions of themselves in the hope that one of these future B&Ts will have The Song already written for them, their daughters get hold of another time-traveling booth and travel into the past to assemble a most righteous and excellent jam band of historical musical geniuses (including Jimi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong, and Mozart, among others) to help out their dads. Meanwhile, a sad-sack killer robot named Dennis (Anthony Carrigan) is dispatched on his own mission to kill Bill & Ted in the alternate hope that that will save the universe somehow. Eventually, everyone comes together and everything works out with a little help from Bill and Ted’s old friend Death (Sadler again).
In short, Face the Music mashes up the principal elements of both Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey and tailors the remix for 21st century sensibilities, particularly those regarding female agency. It’s mostly successful in walking that line, with Weaving and Lundy-Paine making an appealing and credible B&T 2.0, the latter in particular reproducing young Keanu’s voice and mannerisms with uncanny accuracy, while staying true to the spirit of the OG Bill and Ted. (The movie also tries to do better by the female characters from the previous movies, i.e., the wives, with mixed results.) But the main attraction here, of course, is Winter and Reeves, and they don't disappoint Although Winter has long since shifted from acting to directing documentaries, he’s actually the looser and more relaxed of the two here; Keanu plays along gamely but can’t quite capture the space-cadet charm of his younger self. Still, it’s fun to watch this pair of real-life friends rediscover their on-screen groove, and they’re clearly having a blast playing the increasingly and hilariously unpleasant older versions of Bill and Ted.
Lundy-Paine & Weaving as Bill & Ted's daughters
Sure, there are jokes that fall flat, subplots that remain underdeveloped, and scenes that drag out too long, and the movie overall doesn’t establish any reason for its existence other than fan service. However, in the current climate, in which most of Bill and Ted’s original fans are probably looking back wistfully to a time when they themselves could shred an air guitar or laugh about playing Twister with death, that’s reason enough to exist. Party on, dudes.