BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC
( Cert PG, 92mins. In cinemas now)
NO WAY? Yes way! Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter have reprised their dim- witted double act after nearly 30 years.
When we catch up with the now middle- aged Bill ( Alex Winter) and Ted ( Keanu Reeves), it seems the years haven’t been kind to the time- travelling heavy metal nuts.
Their group Wyld Stallyns are playing wedding receptions and Mexican restaurants and Ted is
pondering giving up on his rock
’ n’ roll dream.
But at least they’re still married to the medieval princesses ( Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes), and their daughters ( Brigette Lundy- Paine and Samara Weaving) adore them. And the girls will play a big role in a third time- hopping adventure.
A visitor from the future arrives with a warning: write a seminal anthem in the next 77 minutes, or “time and space will collapse”.
The dopey duo hit on a scheme to travel forward in time to steal the song from their future selves who must have already written it.
Their daughters have a different plan. They will head into the past to recruit the ultimate super- group, beginning with Jimi Hendrix and ending with the cave woman who discovered percussion.
Time- travel can be mindbending but here we’re never afraid of losing the plot. It should all be reassuringly familiar to those with the fuzziest of memories of 1989’ s Excellent Adventure and 1991’ s Bogus Journey.
Air guitars are strummed, old- fashioned phone boxes tumble through time and characters are killed and sent to hell. By the time we are reunited with a hopscotching Grim Reaper ( William Sadler), the nostalgia has been dialled right up to 11.
And perhaps ironically, after a slightly shaky start, it’s Death who brings the film to life.
Sadler, who scarily doesn’t seem to have aged, has both the timing and one- liners to carry us to the finale, which is reassuringly silly but also strangely touching in its old- fashioned optimism. “Be excellent to each other. Party on.” Perhaps us Generation X slackers still have something to say.