Film review. Bill and Ted Face the Music. Is this journeys end for the boys?
This is the third part of the franchise and the weakest. The film has been described by critics as slapdash or likeable despite its flaws. There is goodwill for Bill and Ted with critics wanting to get behind the boys. Yes, I wanted to get behind them as well and I hold the first two films with affection. But this instalment exploits that goodwill with a lazy Bill and Ted outing.
The films plot still has Bill and Ted flying back and forth to the future with a stop of in hell. The bulk of the film takes place around the years we live in now. Bill and Ted, now middle aged like a tribute act continuing to play for dwindling audiences still searching for a song to unite the world. They are helped in this most excellent project by their daughters who are a female version of Bill and Ted (will they take the franchise forward?). Tagging along for the journey, Bill, and Ted’s wives whom they met during the middle ages and are officially princesses but now alongside Bill and Ted attend marriage counselling. The counselling session is apart from the hell scenes are the funniest part of the film. The laziness of the film is in the way both Bill and Ted go back to the past, lurk around, pick up famous musicians to help them play a song to unite the world. You feel like you are watching an exercise in ticking off the musicians as they collect them from the past to create a super group featuring Louis Armstrong and Mozart to name two. Instead of funny these forays into the past are a bit joyless. More disappointing, those famous musicians from down the ages rarely add anything funny.
Keanu Reeves playing Ted as a tired man with the spark gone. Bill played by Alex Winter at least has a charm you can engage with against Keanu Reeves who looks like he is going through the motions of playing Ted. Who knows but maybe the film meant more to Winter than Reeves? The film goes to hell not in a handcart but in a scene that is its funniest with Satan a frustrated bass guitar player. There is a sub plot were Bill and Ted go far into the future looking for their future selves who they hope to have written that song that unites the world. You get to see versions of Bill and Ted as bloated rock stars or burnt out oldies. All of this watched over by the gods far up in space babbling on about how failure to get a song uniting the world means not just the end of the world but everything and the universe folding in it on itself. This is all garbage and in the spirit of the film we should roll with it and enjoy the ride. If only I could, because this film feels flimsy like a television episode that could last forty-five minutes stretched out to an hour and a half. The film at its best stands for a distraction during these pandemic times but does I think bring the franchise to its lowest and hopefully its end point. The journey is it an end.
