Seeking a tune to save the world
teaming up again with Winter returning as Bill and Reeves as Ted.
Directed by Dean Parisot of “Galaxy Quest” renown, “Face the Music” has a portion of good laughs, though none on the level of that one about ditching Napoleon at the mall. There are also some decent riffs here on the earlier movies’ temporally twisty, deathanddoom and devoted broness themes. But as this one’s apocalyptic plot clock ticks away, its pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo grows simultaneously frantic and kind of tedious. That’s a pacing trick that you don’t see every day, which may be because it doesn’t work too well.
Things aren’t entirely bogus for 2020 Bill and Ted, even if their band, Wyld Stallyns, has been reduced to just the two of them and their gigs are weddings and open mike nights around their Southern California hometown of San Dimas. Experimenting with Mongolian throat singing and bagpipes is not leading to that tune to unite all humankind.
However, each guy has a lovely daughter who takes after her dad.
Ted’s girl, Billie, is played by Brigette LundyPaine of “Atypical,” who does a stellar approximation of Reeves’ densewiththeodd-brainstorm mannerisms.
Samara Weaving (“Ready or Not”) lets a hint of her native Australian accent slip through as Bill’s offspring, Thea, which subtly references the fact that both girls’ mothers are English princesses from the 15th century. (Expert straight women Erinn Hayes and Jayma Mays portray the better halves this goround.)
Soon after the farfuture survivors of Bill and Ted’s mentor, Rufus (I think I spotted a George Carlin hologram in a phone booth time machine), launch the guys on multiyear hops to encounter their progressively asinine, downtheroad selves, Billie and Thea head to the past and put together a supergroup to play the surely awesome song their fathers have yet to compose. With a roster of such giants as Jimi Hendrix, Mozart and rapper Kid Cudi, this enterprise can only wind up in one infernal place.
And you know what that means: Hello, William Sadler! Time to get the old band back together!
Much of this is good fun, especially if you enjoyed the sweet, silly previous films that are referenced. Additionally, there are fine comic turns from Kristen Schaal (“Bob’s Burgers,” “Last Man on Earth”) as Rufus’ exasperated daughter, Jillian Bell (“Brittany Runs a Marathon”) as a couples therapist trying to steer a session that Bill and Ted insist on making a fourway, and Anthony Carrigan (NoHo Hank from “Barry”), unrecognizable as a Terminatorlike robot who’s even more inept than our protagonists.
About those two guys, though ... Reeves and Winter don’t display all of the old gusto here, at least not when they’re playing the Bill and Ted we follow through the movie. Understandably, they seem more engaged when acting as the awful future Stallyns, since those iterations offer outlandish new notes to play. Trying to recapture the warmth and youthful dopiness of three decades ago can’t be easy for guys in their 50s, so the last thing one wants to do is be hard on lovable lunkheads for trying.
Let’s just say it’s noticeable, and not call it too big of a deal.
Besides, any movie that celebrates the power of music, friendship, family and all of that scientific stuff Kid Cudi keeps jabbering about has got to be somewhat welcome at this particular point in the spacetime continuum, right?
Oh, and stay past the closing credits for a little extra excellence.
None of the laughs are on the level of that one about ditching Napoleon at the mall.