It’s bodacious, dudes! Bill and Ted’s excellent new adventure
REVIEW
Bill & Ted Face The Music (PG) In cinemas now ★★★★✩
WE ARE in the midst of most egregious, heinous and bogus times, as Bill and Ted would put it. So it’s totally excellent (cue air guitar) to rediscover a corner of this dulled universe where joy and innocence still shine.
It’s over 30 years since those nonetoo-bright teen rockers William S. Preston, Esq (Alex Winter) and his bestie Theodore ‘Ted’ Logan (a smiley Keanu Reeves in his breakthrough role) first leapt into a time-travelling phone booth to save the galaxy.
Yet fans will find this belated sci-fi comedy sequel almost miraculously captures the original’s goofy charm.
A full generation on, our two chuckle-headed chums are stuck in suburban middle-age. The stiff, serious-faced Reeves has seemingly morphed into Professor Snape, though Winter looks virtually unchanged as bubbly blonde Bill. Luckily, the pair have stayed friends as they have less than two hours to write a song that will create global harmony, or see reality destroyed. Like, no pressure, dudes.
A pander-to-Gen-Z subplot sees Bill and Ted’s carbon-copy daughters travel through time collecting the ultimate band, including Jimi Hendrix, Mozart et al. Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine both put on an endearingly lollopy show.
But the main draw remains our dynamic dim duo and their big-heartedly silly goings-on.
In what other movie would you find heroes challenging Death (a returning William Sadler) to hopscotch in Hell?