Review of Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) by Loucetios — 03 Sep 2020

I really really really wanted to like this. In full faith I sat down and watched this with an open mind and hoped for something resembling the banter, wit, and subtlety of the first two. A fool's errand ultimately.

When I was a kid my aunt would bring tons of movies on VHS with her on Sunday to my gran's house and we'd watch everything from Bill & Ted to Edward Scissor Hands with her along with other classics. For Bill & Ted it was such an easy movie to like and enjoy. Me and my bro both loved metal and gnr at the time, so did my aunt god rest her soul.

Later when I was 20-25 I'd get home from a drunk night out and sometimes see Bogus Journey on the movie channels which is pretty close to the perfect 90s movie in my mind, plus it has a really good message that I think a lot of people could do with hearing these days.

Unfortunately the humor in the 2020 release here is just a disaster, I didn't laugh once. I felt happy at points that Alex Winters and Keanu got to relive their characters a bit while having a little light-hearted fun. In a sense at least the original team that made the movies got to have one last laugh together.

"Babes" have been replaced with "princesses". I don't think anyone expected the language to come back, but this writing is incredibly sterile.

I'd like to say there was some passing of the torch going on here but neither of these girls are exactly the next generation. They're both known actresses who are 26 and 28 respectively. It's kind of creepy and weird to see a 28 year old woman acting as if she's a teenager/child in designer dungarees. Kinda pretending to sound and act like a guy she saw in a 90s movie. Just didn't come across well at all.

Alex Winters and Keanu were 23 and 22 when they did the first movie and were largely unknowns cracking jokes about not getting carded (typical teenage thing). You can see how innocent and yet everyday they are. They should've given some kids their first crack at a movie instead of some starlets. (but other forces may be at play ofc, hollywood etc).

The moments like saying "all we are is dust in the wind dude" to Socrates are gone, or saying "why would we lie to ourselves?" after just meeting each other. No sadly the one liners have instead been replaced with.. Dennis the robot. (I can't remember his full name).

This character is GUARANTEED to make your skin crawl for how cringe the execution is. If anyone has a problem with this review, I want you to justify Dennis the robot to me first. Please. I want an explanation for that abomination of an idea.

You'd think they'd make a reference to being metal heads or something, yknow.. reuse the old material at least. Nope. Just "haha so awkward" and "quirky omg" stuff.

Yet despite that the movie in general comes across as deadly serious. No scenes of Napoleon discovering water parks or Mozart slaying the synths (criminal this wasn't done with new instruments). There's like 10 minutes of collecting all the historical figures, and then 5 minutes of terrible generic music at the end conducted by the girls. The Hendrix/Mozart scene could've been done a million times better.

There are some feel good moments but neither of the actresses playing the girls really come across as sincere for the entire movie. They just pseudo gush over musical greats and that really is the extent of their contribution to the movie. The movie felt afraid to give them more dialogue.

The wit and humor of playing Battleship with death is completely absent. The question is of course, why? Why is all the wit and humor absent? Well Bill and Ted are married it seems and marriage is hard.

It's an unfortunate case of too much to do and too little time with too big a cast that all have to be given screen-time.

Kristen Schaal dominates this movie for some reason, not sure how that happened. There are so many dumb useless characters that soak up a surprising amount of screen-time.

They could've cut that entire therapy scene. It's labored to such a ridiculous degree it's painful. Once again, it's just not particularly funny or clever. The jokes are "haha omg her reaction". Throw in a few puns here and there for christ sake.

Most of the dialogue is insanely labored. If you sit down and analyze it 90% of the scenes are just characters telling other characters what they need to do next.

Finally I'm going to talk about the biggest sin briefly. The music. The music is atrociously bad. They use off the cuff stock sound clips that sound terrible. Gone are references to Van Halen, incoming are tired references to theremins because yknow, quirkiness. There's generic OST orchestral music taken from some sound bank.

I came away from this feeling old, which at 30 I guess I am. So is the girl in the movie though so? I dunno. This movie is very confused about what it wants to be.