Bill & Ted Face the Music

I loved the Bill and Ted movies, especially Bogus Journey. But this was a disaster.

You can feel the cringe all over this, from the undeveloped script, the callbacks, the woke Hollyweird stuff, and that cheese finale.

Alex Winter did sooo much better than Keanu Reeves in this one. Which was surprising.

William Sadler was amazing as Death, again. The scenes with the princesses also played very well.

The daughters and all the new side characters didn't work. The robot might have worked if the rest of the film played better.

I would have given this 1 star if it wasn't for Alex Winter. The future versions of Bill were golden. British Bill was so creepy and Old Bill's face will keep me laughing for a couple more days. You can tell he worked so much harder than everyone else involved.

It's great seeing some of the actors return. You can tell everyone had a blast filming this. That alone in certain moments can bring a smile to your face. Not all of the jokes land, but that's comedy. The finale damn near brought me to tears. I guess 2020 has been a rough year.

We have to face facts, the reason there are so many sequels and remakes of movies from the 80s and 90s is because Hollywood peaked then. The 2000's marked the beginning of the decline, which has been rapidly descending in the last few years. Despite this decline and despite the mediocre Force Awakens style influences in the script, the charm and humour... and of course the nostalgia saves this from being unwatchable, which is high praise. Zazz as the robot steals the show along with the woman from Flight of the Concordes but I mostly left feeling a little sad that this movie wasn't made in the 90s and sad that Keane Reeves may not actually be immortal.

I mostly watched this to see Keanu go from John Wick to revising his surfer dude persona.

He looks like he's having loads of fun and I'm deliberately ignoring all the usual crap Hollywood writers did to promote "women good, men bad" as that is just going to be a trend we put up with until producers are sick of losing money.

This is a silly movie, with a silly plot, with actors enjoying being silly. I had a good time watching it for what it was.

It's "ok".

That's all you really need to know. It's ok, and it does its job. This film was never going to top the first two, becasue they are a product of their time, and you can never re-create that, but Bill & Ted Face The Music is a decent enough send off for the characters.

It is a bit sad though that it is just "ok". The film does have a certain cheapness to its look and feel, and Keanu was sounding a bit tired if I'm honest. It retreads some ground, but not as much as you would think, and there are genuine laughs in here for sure. Dean Parisot's directing is solid, but a bit lacklustre in places, and I think they should have got Peter Hewitt back from Bogus Journey. It's not awful by any means, but I think it lacks a bit of magic (which was probably the 80s/90s).

A special mention must go to Alex Winter who does a great job here. He IS Bill S. Preston, and he has his old mannerisms down to a tee which was very familiar and very comforting.

In a way, the film made me a bit sad. Bogus Journey tied up the story quite well, but there was always a bit of the door open to do more if they wanted, and now that it's done it was a kind of uneventful. 1994-ish would have been a perfect time to do a third film, because as upsetting as it is, Bill and Ted with all their "Wows" and "Dudes", are The past.

However, they are MY past, and from MY generation, so I was very happy to see them once last time, and despite all the nitpciks, I had fun with the film.

All that's left to say is the best message in any film ever:

Be excellent to each other...

... and party on!!!