It’s the second week of September and I’m already up to my fourth post for this month. It feels almost unprecedented, but I guess it’s good to finally have some action on this dead site, so thank you Bill and Ted for being one of the four apostles to give the Complainer his groove back!
Wait, you came here for the review, oh yeah the movie was good, it was enjoyable, could have been better, but I’m not really complaining about it.
I have known who Bill and Ted were for a couple of years now and only bothered to check them out when they first announced Face the Music about a month ago. After a pretty rough year of movies and being alive I need something like this that is so absurdly ridiculous that it just brings out the stupidest grin from me. That’s what I got from Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey, and it felt great to see that Face the Music gave me that and nothing else.
Bill and Ted Face the Music is this year’s Zombieland: Double Tap for me. A movie that isn’t necessarily better or worse than the previous films, it’s faithful enough, that you can walk out of the cinema and feel like you saw another typical Bill and Ted adventure. This is something I normally complain about in most nostalgic reboots of beloved movies, but this type of style seems to work for these silly over the top comedies like Bill and Ted and Zombieland because it knows what people like from those films and doesn’t even try to do anything better.
The only problem with this is I feel less inclined to revisit Face the Music than it’s predecessors as it doesn’t really offer anything new. It’s more interested in being a rehash of the previous two. I really like that Bogus Journey wasn’t afraid to get weird, and I commend it for that while the only new thing this movie has to offer is that Bill and Ted’s daughters grew-up to be just like them and there’s a robot who is very self-conscious.
Let’s move on shall we as I have better things to do than complain about Bill and Ted. The whole franchise is literally built around the idea of giving the middle finger to time inconsistencies and plot holes. I could still point them out, but this is the type of movie where I imagine you wouldn’t care, which is fair enough as I’m also in the same boat. We have Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter returning to play the two empty headed wannabe rockers, which is most excellent. They’re dopey daughters are fun additions to the cast. I like all the historical figures they hang out with, the conflicted robot was pretty funny and it was nice to see Death again. Overall I enjoyed the cast, the jokes made me smirk and the plot is as absurd as the other movies, except more epic because of modern special effects and a little convoluted as the cherry on top!
If you have the opportunity to see this, I would take it either at the cinema or watch it on VOD when you get the chance. If you can’t, watch the previous two movies as they’re even better. The Bill & Ted franchise movies are fun stupidity that is so detached from our own reality it’s probably the best movie series ever for real escapism. While Bill and Ted Face the Music probably doesn’t fit the criteria, I’m going to give it the thumbs up approval anyway, because I’m sick of this year and its probably the funniest thing I have seen all year.
