{"id":14773,"date":"2020-08-27T16:30:35","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T23:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=14773"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:18:46","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:18:46","slug":"bill-ted-face-the-music-is-a-slight-delight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/bill-ted-face-the-music-is-a-slight-delight\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill & Ted Face the Music<\/i> is a Slight Delight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sequels can carry an unnecessary amount of baggage, and a surfeit of expectations. It\u2019s been nearly 30 years since Bill and Ted went on their Bogus Journey<\/em>, and over the decades, the slackers\u2019 cult appeal\u2014and fans\u2019 demand for the finale of their cinematic trilogy\u2014has steadily grown. Bill and Ted\u2019s pleased \u201cWhoa!\u201d at the very world around them is the sort of simple joy that hits harder now. Their concluding adventure, Bill & Ted Face the Music<\/em>, is slight, its character development narrow, and its overall plot familiar. But the delight everyone onscreen is clearly experiencing in their return to this universe is infectious, and the film\u2019s message of togetherness is undeniably welcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With references to both 1989\u2019s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure<\/em> and 1991\u2019s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey<\/em>, Face the Music<\/em> begins in the present day, with the trilogy\u2019s titular characters still best friends and still playing together as Wyld Stallyns. But otherwise, much has changed since Bogus Journey<\/em>: They\u2019re no longer famous, no longer drawing record crowds, and no longer playing music that touches the entire world. Instead, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are just suburban husbands and dads now, living together with their wives, Joanna (Jayma Mays) and Elizabeth (Erinn Hayes), and daughters, Thea (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine), respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill and Ted have always been inseparable, and their daughters Thea and Billie, named after each other, are exactly the same. They hang out in the garage a lot. There is a bag of Cheetos permanently in Billie\u2019s hand. Their knowledge of music of all genres and types is insanely extensive and detailed, and their love for it is unparalleled. It suffuses every interaction the girls have with each other and with their fathers (sorry to say, the wives\/mothers in this film are mostly an afterthought), and Bill and Ted are impressed and proud of the young women they\u2019ve helped raise. Billie and Thea are special, and their appreciation for the world around them\u2014just as their fathers\u2019 is, and was\u2014is genuine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The only problem is that Bill and Ted haven\u2019t done what they thought they would: They haven\u2019t written a song that would unite the world. \u201cThose Who Rock\u201d was popular, for a time. But the problems of the world kept on going after the song\u2019s release, and in the years since, Bill and Ted have become afterthoughts. They know they\u2019ve failed, and yet they\u2019re unaware of the magnitude of how much until Kelly (Kristen Schaal), the daughter of Rufus (George Carlin), Bill and Ted\u2019s onetime time-traveling guide, travels back in time to let them know that if the duo doesn\u2019t write the song in 77 minutes, space and time as they know it will end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a lot of pressure! After a lifetime, 77 minutes feels like nothing! And so Bill and Ted are spurred into action, deciding to use that iconic phone booth to travel to the future and steal the song from themselves. Meanwhile, Billie and Thea, realizing that their \u201cmost excellent dads\u201d are in trouble, decide to travel through time on their own to help. Along the way, a number of familiar faces pop up\u2014robots, demons\u2014to tangle with the families as they try to save the world.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While Billie and Thea\u2019s journey mirrors their fathers\u2019 from preceding films, providing us with a pleasant dose of nostalgia in how satisfyingly Weaving and Lundy-Paine channel the youthful energies of Winter and Reeves, Bill and Ted\u2019s jump forward allows Reeves and Winter themselves to flex some different comedic muscles. They\u2019re not asked to do much, but the film is buoyed by the actors\u2019 broad humor and willing physicality. As a franchise, Bill and Ted has always been willing to poke fun at its heroes, and Face the Music<\/em> takes that joke a step further by making the men face off against raggedy, desperate versions of themselves to comment on middle age, suburban ennui, and abandoned dreams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, Face the Music<\/em> is more straightforward narratively than Bogus Journey<\/em>, and doesn\u2019t bother itself too much with the \u201cright\u201d details of time travel. That fluidity and flexibility keeps the pacing swift and the run time tight (only about 78 minutes), so the movie basically jumps from one humorous set piece involving Bill and Ted to an impressive musical performance observed by Billie and Thea, and back again. \u201cWe have it in us, dude,\u201d Bill and Ted agree when they commit to trying to save humanity one more time, and the passion with which they throw themselves into that task\u2014and how readily their daughters join them, willing to do whatever it takes to make the world a better place\u2014feels surprisingly resonant in this moment.\u00a0\u00a0\"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B\u00a0<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The comedy franchise\u2019s belated new entry is lightweight but delightful, allowing its stars to flex their comic muscles while exploring middle age, suburban ennui, and abandoned dreams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":582,"featured_media":14776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340],"tags":[1098,162],"class_list":["post-14773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22740,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14773\/revisions\/22740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}