Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter travel through time again, this time to save reality and redeem the honor of Generation X. "Bill & Ted Face The Music" is a lovably casual attempt to re-evaluate the value of friendliness that has been sorely lost in this day and age.
More than 30 years ago, William Preston and Theodore Logan, played by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves, already experienced their funny adventures with time travel and in the new part the boys essentially keep their innocence on their various time travels, despite the ravages of time both are plain to see and they're probably a bit heavier today than they used to be - like so many of us. "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" (1991), the second film in the "Bill & Ted" series, ended in rock 'n' roll utopianism, in which the two united the universe with their songs and thus secured the future made - it didn't work out for the two of them on a personal or cosmic level. Bill and Ted's band, the Wyld Stallyns (pronounced "wild stallions" for those boomers and millennials who missed the first time), and the boys' marriages have faltered over the years. Their wives, Joanna (Jayma Mays) and Elizabeth (Erinn Hayes), actually patient medieval English princesses, are pushing for couples therapy - for the unbreakable bond between the boys is a problem, as well as the deadlocked ambitions and the persistent and implicit rejection of the boys' maturity.
While this development frustrates Joanna and Elizabeth, it seems to please Bill and Ted's daughters, Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving). These young women who address themselves as "Dude" may be better musicians than their fathers. They start with a broader cultural frame of reference, however, and when an emissary from the future arrives with a dire warning, the younger B. and T. are sent back in time to recruit musical geniuses, while the older ones are pushed forward trying to bring their doings together . Changes have taken place in «Bill & Ted Face the Music», both in music taste and in the time travel mechanics. Rock (now known as Dad Rock) is not the universal solvent it used to be and the chronological shift is no longer a simple linear thing. Now it's multiple timelines and increasingly complicated contingency models.
In the annals of late 20th century dim dude comedy, Bill and Ted hold a special place. Beavis and Butt-Head were more aggressively satirical. Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar lived in a fully realized social landscape. But Bill and Ted had a lot more fun - flipping through the centuries, meeting Freud and Socrates, and deriving a transcendentally simple lesson from their historical travels: "Be excellent to each other. Party on." The new film, directed by Dean Parisot, is a lovably casual attempt to re-emphasize the value of kindness, while cracking a few jokes. Wyld Stallyns bassist Death (Bill Sadler) provides many of these, as does a neurotic killer robot named Dennis (Anthony Carrigan). Various historical figures appear, notably a supergroup recruited by Billie and Thea from ancient China and Africa, as well as less ancient Vienna and New Orleans. Because it takes great musicians to keep reality from collapsing. The film's climax is a harpsichord and Stratocaster duet performed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Jimi Hendrix, a well conceived and executed demonstration of how genius recognizes genius. "Bill & Ted Face the Music" is a great success and builds on its predecessors, which are endearingly modest and harmlessly silly.