BILL AND TED FACE THE MUSIC (2020) - Ted "Theodore Logan
This is it. My journey has come to an end.
All the way back at the start of April, with COVID just starting to ruin 2020, I decided to do something productive and creative with myself: watch Keanu Reeves' entire filmography and write (often far too long) recap posts on this once dormant blog.
Seven months and 59 movies later, I'm done.
Sure, I skipped a tiny segment of movies, none of which featured Keanu in any meaningful way but I think I more than made up for that by watching a bunch of movies I'd already seen before once again.
So here we are and isn't it fitting that this project concludes with the very, very, very long awaited sequel, "Bill and Ted Face the Music."
Now you might be saying to yourself, Jordan, didn't you already recap this movie?
Well, sort of. I wrote a pretty brief post immediately after "Face the Music" came out but wanted to revisit this since my post was very short and entirely spoiler free for the small segment of folks who both read this blog and hadn't yet seen the movie. I'll also try to keep this one on the brief side but there will certainly be some spoilers ahead.
I'm not going to rehash the last post other than to say that I had been waiting something like 11 years for "Face the Music" since they announced teasers for it all the way back in 2009 or 2010. I watched it the second it came available to purchase, then again the next night, then again about a week later, and finally a fourth time for completion of this project.
Once again, I'm not going to do a full-on recap of the movie, but instead I'd like to touch on the good and the bad of the newest and final (most likely) entry into the Bill and Ted universe. Let's start with the bad -
Okay, so there's not a lot of what I'd call "bad" in "Face the Music." In fact, I'm shocked that this was as good as it was given that it had been nearly 30 years since Bogus Journey. But there are a small handful of things that I didn't love:
*The daughters and their subplot. Sorry, I wanted to enjoy this part of the movie a lot more than I did but in a lot of ways it felt like the movie was doing a condensed version of Excellent Adventure with two women doing their best to do impressions of the heroes of the first two movies and it just falls mostly flat. I get what they were trying to do here, it just wasn't executed all that well. I also thought Bridgette Lundy-Paine (Billie) did a much better job than Samara Weaving (Thea) even if neither one of them really stood out to me, but I blame this more on the writing of their characters than anything else.
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| Sorry daughters, your work is more heinous than most triumphant |
*Parts of the movie felt a little rushed to production or like they simply ran out of money in certain areas of the movie. For example, when Bill and Ted travel to future San Dimas, it's essentially a gigantic empty space that I assume was supposed to filled in digitally with...something. But instead we're treated to a desert of nothingness. I love the tribute to George Carlin and the hologram of him, but why is this sitting in the equivalent of a gigantic empty lot in future San Dimas with nothing surrounding it? It sure seemed to me like this was SUPPOSED to be filled with....something else, be it people, buildings, something....and it just felt lazy or like the production just ran out of money.
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| Bill and Ted and an Empty Void |
*I truly hate to say this part, but Keanu Reeves appears to have forgotten how to play Ted in certain parts of the movie. I really love all the different Teds we get throughout the movie, which I'll get to in a second, but Original Ted just seems...off. It's almost as if Keanu has lost the goofiness of his youth and just can't get completely into the character anymore.
*For the third movie in a row, the franchise has no clue what to do with the princesses, who are once again played by a third set of actresses. I get that they aren't the stars of the show but it also felt like something was missing here and I would have been a-ok if the movie had decided to feature them prominently in a subplot instead of the daughters. The movie even set them up for it, traveling through time themselves to find a period where they are happy with their husbands. It's especially frustrating because I really like Erinn Hayes particularly from her role in "Children's Hospital."
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| Maybe they'll be given something more to do in movie #4 |
*The ending feels a bit rushed and I think it's missing a scene or two after the concert that saves humanity just to wrap things up.
Okay, now that all the "bad" is out of the way, let me get to the good stuff:
*Holy shit did Alex Winter crush his performance in this. The dude hasn't really been in front of the camera in over 20 years but unlike Keanu, he fell right back into the loveable doofus that is Bill.
*One of the only things I did talk about in the previous post was the scene stealing Anthony Carrigan as the evil turned good robot Dennis Caleb McCoy. I also love this guy from his work on the HBO show "Barry," but he's just so goddamn funny in "Face the Music" and really steals every scene he's in. He also made me anxious for "Barry" to return to TV, whenever that is.
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| Dennis CALEB Mccoy to you |
*Someone else who excels in this one is William Sadler, reprising his role as Death. Along with Dennis McCoy, Death has some of the funnier moments in the movie and it feels like William Sadler hasn't lost a step at all reprising his role, unlike our boy Keanu.
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| They Melvin'd me |
*I feel like this one does a really good job taking parts of both of the first two movies and turning the third one into a bit of a weird hybrid of the two, even if the daughter subplot was lacking in execution. Bill and Ted travel back to hell (along with a SWAT bus, which is hilarious) while their daughters travel through time. It's a smart way to deliver this movie.
*I haven't mentioned yet, but the movie is actually really funny, particularly the opening wedding scene with Bill and Ted playing a variety of instruments and of course the fact that Deacon is now marrying Missy. I also love the part where Bill and Ted are talking to each other about their remaining fans and are able to mention all of them by name.
*Of course loved the tributes to George Carlin, and yes I've teared up all four times watching this during the end of the movie when The Great Leader tells her daughter "your father would be so proud."
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| Making us all proud |
*Dave Grohl!
*I fucking loved the fan montage over the end credits of the movie, I filmed a video of myself for this but it looks like I didn't make the final cut, which is a shame because that would have just about been completely life fulfilling.
*I love all the scenes of future Bill and Ted and this is where Keanu actually had a much better performance. Especially like the prison sequence and all the makeup and costuming involved that made this look hilarious.
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| Nice tats |
*The final music sequence that saves the world is just a perfect way to end the trilogy.
At the end of the day, the good far outweighs the bad and the movie was completely worth the 30 year wait. It's not better than Excellent Adventure but I would put it just slightly above Bogus Journey and I'm just ecstatic that this movie actually happened. It's just a shame it came out during COVID because I was dying to see this on a big screen.
Box Office Information: NA. I really hope this movie made a fortune from streaming platforms and it's just such a goddamn bummer this movie happened to be released in 2020, the worst year ever.
Rotten Tomatoes: 82% Critic/72% Audience. I think this was the highest critically rated movie of the trilogy.
IMDB: 6.1
My Movie Rating: 9. Yes, I'm a very biased reviewer when it comes to Bill and Ted but I really did love this movie and am not even mad that I've watched it four times in about two months.
Keanu Rating: This one is tough for me because I really wanted to love him for reprising his role as Ted but he just misses the mark in a lot of spots in this. Alex Winter gets a 10, but this isn't the Alex Winter project, so I'm giving Keanu a 6.5.
Up Next: Well, that really wraps up all the movies. But have no fear, I've got a two if not three part recap coming up in the coming days.
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