BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC : Tuesday 15th September 2020.

'BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC' which I saw earlier this week is the PG Rated long awaited third instalment in the 'Bill & Ted' franchise following 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure' in 1989 and 'Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey' in 1991. Both of those films combined generated US$79M at the worldwide Box Office off the back of production budgets amounting to US$27M. This Sci-Fi comedy film is Directed by Dean Parisot whose previous feature film credits take in 'Galaxy Quest', 'Fun with Dick and Jane' and 'RED 2', was released in the US on 28th August and last week here in Australia, cost US$25M to produce and has so far grossed US$3.5M. It has generated largely positive Reviews.

Here Alex Winter reprises his role of William S. 'Bill' Preston Esq. and Keanu Reeves his role as Ted 'Theodore' Logan. Following a montage of the history of the Wyld Stallyns and their rise to meteoric super stardom and their inevitable fall from grace as they failed to write that one song that would unify the world, their CD sales took a sharp nosedive and the pair were destined to play low level gigs in dive bars in front of largely stoned or drunk patrons, Bill and Ted have remained surprisingly upbeat. Now in 2020, they are initially seen making a speech and then playing their latest song at the wedding of their mother/step mother (it's complicated) which goes horribly wrong and sounds like a cacophony of disjointed uncoordinated musical instruments all fighting against each other to be heard. 

After the failed wedding gig in front of family and friends, Ted confides in Bill that he thinks they well never write the prophesied song, and a local music store has offered him $6,500 for his Les Paul guitar which he is seriously considering taking up. However, their young daughters Theadora 'Thea' Preston (Samara Weaving) and Wilhelmina 'Billie' Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine) have great faith in their fathers and are their greatest supporters. They egg them on with words of encouragement. 

Meanwhile, Kelly (Kristen Schaal) the now grown up daughter of their earlier time travelling guide Rufus, arrives from seven hundred years in the future to take them to 2720, where they meet with The Great Leader (Holland Taylor), who is also Kelly's mother who advises them that they have until 7:17pm that evening to write the song that will unite the universe and prevent all reality from collapsing once and forever. 

Realising that it will be almost impossible for them to write such a song in just over seventy minutes they use Rufus's time travelling phone booth to steal the song from their future selves. Landing back home but two years hence in 2022, they learn that their future selves are even more unsuccessful than they were, and that their wives have left them. With Bill and Ted missing, the Great Leader sends a time-traveling robot named Dennis Caleb McCoy (Anthony Carrigan) to kill them, hoping therefore to restore balance to the universe. Kelly travels back to the present to warn them, but instead meets their daughters, Billie and Thea, who decide to help their fathers create the song. Using Kelly's time machine, Billie and Thea recruit musicians Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still), Louis Armstrong (Jeremiah Craft), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Daniel Dorr), Ling Lun (the legendary founder of music in ancient China, played by Sharon Gee), and Grom (a drummer from before recorded history, played by Patty Anne Miller).

Bill and Ted travel to five years down the track to 2025, where they have seemingly become successful. However, they are tricked by their future selves, who try to pass off a song by Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Them Crooked Vultures) as their own. Billie, Thea, and their newly recruited band members from across time return to the present day to meet up with Kelly and a time-displaced Kid Cudi (Kid Cudi), but Dennis inadvertently kills them and sends them all to Hell. In the ensuing fracas Bill and Ted jump forward to 2030 and discover that their future selves are incarcerated in prison and have become ripped, muscle bound heavily tattooed inmates who now have an axe to grind with their past selves for leaving them at the mercy of the Police authorities during the bust at Dave Grohl's place, which led to their imprisonment. When their future selves get into a brawl with other inmates, Bill & Ted make a quick exit and jump forward to 2067.

There they find a much older Bill and Ted on their deathbeds in a hospital. The aged Bill and Ted give their younger selves a USB drive containing the fabled song written by Preston/Logan, stating that it must be performed at 7:17pm at 'MP 46'. Upon saying their final farewells and exiting the hospital, Dennis appears, but stands down upon learning Bill and Ted have the song, and painfully informs them that he killed their daughters, and every member of their band too. In an attempt to coax Dennis into killing them so they can rescue their daughters in Hell, Bill snaps the USB drive in half and tosses it away. This backfires as a distraught Dennis full of remorse, turns his killer laser beam weapon on himself, but Bill and Ted throw themselves in the way of the beam, so sending all three to their deaths and the depths of Hell. There Bill and Ted locate their daughters and the band. With the help of Billie and Thea, Bill and Ted square away their differences with their old bandmate Death (William Sadler) to return everyone alive to 2020.

The group arrive on a busy freeway at the 'MP 46' sign post as reality is collapsing all around them, and with only a matter of minutes left until 7:17pm. Bill and Ted realise that the 'Preston/Logan' hand written on the USB drive retrieved by Dennis, actually refers to Billie and Thea, and that the song must be performed by everyone across time and space. They are joined by their wives, Princess Elizabeth Logan (Erinn Hayes) and Princess Joanna Preston (Jayma Mays), who have both come to the realisation they are happiest in their current time period. The four use Rufus' phone booth to create infinite copies of themselves across time and space, handing instruments to everyone who ever lived. Everyone across reality performs the song together, with Billie and Thea producing, while Bill and Ted lead the band on guitar. The universe is repaired and everyone returns to their proper dimensions in time and space.

I would have to say that my expectations going into this film were not particularly high, and I came out not feeling surprised or disappointed either. This film largely hit my mark, and as the third instalment in the franchise with a 29 year hiatus between films two and three it does a largely respectable job of maintaining the quirkiness, the wackiness and the idiosyncrasies that made those first two instalments so popular and unique for their time. Keanu Reeves comes across as being just a little bored and non-plussed about the whole affair but Alex Winter more than makes up for him with his zeal, energy and innate positivity, while William Sadler gets undoubtedly the best lines in the little screen time he is afforded. Samara Weaving and Brigitte Lundy-Paine also put in a respectable turn as Bill and Ted's chips off the old blocks. The film has heart, is goofy, effects laden and there are no bad guys here, only a couple of aspiring muso lunkheads caught up in their own time warp trying to do the right thing by just about everyone they come into contact with, and living by their own credo to 'Be Excellent To Each Other'! A phrase worth heeding in these uncertain times! For lovers of 'Excellent Adventure' and 'Bogus Journey' this final instalment is sure to please and deftly recreates the silliness of those first two films. For everyone else, if you're not expecting too much, then you won't be disappointed.

'Bill & Ted Face the Music' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-