Face Time

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was an enjoyable, funnier-than-you'd-expect little romp. Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey was a far weaker sequel. Recently, I watched the newer, third installment, Bill & Ted Face the Music... and found that it continued the sharp decline.

Decades after being told they'll write the song that unites the world, slacker would-be rock gods Bill and Ted have failed to do so, and the pressure is only mounting. But now the very fabric of time is unraveling, and so there can be no more delays: the world needs the song! As Bill and Ted hop through time trying to find the song, their daughters Thea and Billie set out on their own adventure to assemble the backing band who will play it.

I'd like to think my expectations weren't too high for this movie, but it feels like they were still too high. I think that stems from the question that comes naturally whenever there's a big gap in a movie franchise like this: why now? After nearly 30 years, inertia is clearly on the side of "not making another movie," so it's natural to expect at least something special enough to justify "getting the band back together."

Bill & Ted Face the Music kinda-sorta puts a profound question at the heart of the story: what if you're well into your life and "it" still hasn't "happened" yet? Of course, the movie doesn't really want to dig into that question very seriously so much as use it as a framework to hang jokes on. Unfortunately, the movie simply isn't that funny, serving up one or two moments that at best will make you smile. For a movie with the same "thesis statement" that is both funnier and surprisingly more profound, check out Clerks II.

This movie, by contrast, is mostly just boring. It's stuffed full of re-treads from the first two movies, never done as well as they were the first time around. We've seen "assembling famous people from throughout history," and we've seen "Bill and Ted are complete goobers when interacting with their future selves," and this movie is mostly just those same two ideas on repeat.

Should you find yourself watching it, though, there is at least one saving grace. Two, actually: Bill and Ted's daughters, Thea and Billie. They are played to perfection by Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine, each channeling the essence of "Bill" and "Ted" from the original movie (and far more capably, I'm sorry to say, than either Alex Winter or Keanu Reeves manage to do now). Those one or two moments I mentioned that make you smile? They involve Thea and Billie... and they probably aren't actually any funnier on the page than anything else here, but are rather muscled into amusing by Weaving and Lundy-Paine.

I'd give Bill & Ted Face the Music a D+. The only thing stopping me from declaring it the worst of the trilogy is that while I have re-watched the original more recently (it holds up well enough, overlooking a somewhat "80s standard" amount of "that joke was never funny, but we know better now"), I never bothered to revisit Bogus Journey (and a few people I know who have say it's even worse than I remember). Either way, there's really no need to go back and revisit to watch this third movie. You should just skip the third movie.