Dudes in search of a song
Middleaged Bill and Ted are still trying to write that tune that will save the world
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter shred again as best friends forever — literally, in this movie cosmos — for “Bill & Ted Face the Music.” The timetraveling teens from “Excellent Adventure” (1989) and “Bogus Journey” (1991) are now middleaged losers who have spent the past 29 years not coming up with the great song they were supposed to write that would save the world, as well as all space and time. And time’s about to run out.
The film, available to stream through video on demand and at select theaters across the country (none in the Bay Area) on Friday, Aug. 28, is written by franchise creators Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon,
“Get Duked!” is based on a real youth characterbuilding program started by Queen Elizabeth’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, 64 years ago. So, appropriately, the movie this noble initiative has inspired delivers dumb Cheech & ChongBroken LizardTrailer Park Boys comedy in Scottish burrs so thick most Americans will understand only about half of it.
Yet as its four, generally dimwitted and usually stoned teenage protagonists make their way across the rural Highlands, both they and “Get Duked!,” which hits Amazon Prime on Friday, Aug. 28, grow progressively more clever. By the time their teambuilding exercise reaches its silly and rather bloody end, writerdirector Ninian Doff has paid off a number of great running (and rolling) gags, developed a “Wicker Man”ish allegory of generational/class conflict, and even makes a good joke about those indecipherable Scots accents.
Best buds Dean (Rian Gordon), dumbestofthelot Duncan (Lewis Gribben) and rap star in his own mind DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja) are essentially sentenced to vie for the Duke’s wilderness survival award after burning down their Glasgow high school’s toilet building. At the last minute, they’re instructed to be nice to a fourth hilltrekker, homeschooled and friendless Ian (Samuel Bottomley), who’s the only one of them with a properly working brain.
With no cell phone signals and a good supply of exploding hashish, the lads set off across the rolling countryside, oblivious to all of the missing person flyers at the bus stop where their teacher leaves them.
“In the old days it was better,” an elderly farmer they encounter ominously muses. “People died young. No time to get into trouble.”
Soon enough, the boys are being shot at by a masked aristocrat (Eddie Izzard), mistaken for terrorists by the local constabulary (Kate Dickie and Kevin Guthrie) and discover the wonders of the region’s hallucinogenic rabbit droppings. Against all odds, though, they develop — more like stumble into — a survival plan.
Don’t ask how I know, but the film’s crude, psychedelic trip effects look remarkably authentic. “Duked!” is no “Trainspotting” in its underlying social critique (really, despite all the drug use, nothing about “Get Duked!” is “Trainspotting”), but that stuff ’s funny. So is Britain’s queen of comic horror Alice Lowe (“Sightseers,” “Prevenge”), whose single monologue wins the film’s most impressive performance trophy.
Doff is a music video guy who has made a deceptively wellcrafted feature debut here. While “Get Duked!” may lean on stupidity too much for some tastes, it’s nevertheless that rarest of movie creatures: a smart dumb comedy. Perhaps they can only be spotted in the Scottish Highlands these days.