Running time: 90 minutes (Excellent Adventure), 93 minutes (Bogus Journey), 91 minutes (Face the Music)
Certificate: PG
Language: English
Screenplay: Chris Matheson, Ed Solomon
Director: Stephen Herek (Excellent Adventure), Peter Hewitt (Bogus Journey), Dean Parisot (Face the Music)
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Terry Camilleri, Dan Shor, Tony Steedman, Rod Loomis, Al Leong, Jane Wiedlin, Robert V. Barron, Clifford David, Hal Landon Jr., Bernie Casey, Amy Stoch, J. Patrick McNamara, Diane Franklin, Kimberley Kates, Frazier Bain, William Sadler, Joss Ackland, Pam Grier, Annette Azcuy, Sarah Trigger, Chelcie Ross, Kristen Schaal, Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Anthony Carrigan, Erinn Hayes, Jayma Mays, Beck Bennett
Pulling off comedy that is quite smart while appearing to be very dumb is a difficult thing indeed. It is their success in this most difficult of areas that makes the Bill & Ted movies so much fun even decades after they were first released. Bill S. Preston Esquire (Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves) are stupid. There are no two ways about it; these guys lack intelligence. Together, they are Wyld Stallions, a rock band who cannot play the guitar at all. And yet, it turns out that this pair of fools are supposed to end up ushering in a new age of peace, rock and water slides.
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| Strange things are afoot at the Circle K. |
Despite not being the brightest (example: Teacher: "Who was Joan of Arc?" Ted: "Noah's wife?"), Bill and Ted are winning characters because they are eternally optimistic. You can't help but like them. As first movie Excellent Adventure gets underway, we soon find out that our intrepid pair are at risk of failing history class, the consequences of which will be Ted is moved away to attend military school, marking the end of Wyld Stallions. Enter: Rufus (George Carlin). Rufus is from the future, and he is here to offer Bill and Ted help with their history assignment. Help that comes in the shape of a telephone box time machine, allowing Bill and Ted to visit the past collecting famous historical figures from history to help with their report.
A fairly simple concept that allows for some out there comedic moments, from Napoleon discovering water parks, bowling and ice-cream, to Genghis Kahn discovering baseball bats and Joan of Arc discovering exercise classes. Jokes poking gentle fun at Bill and Ted's limited intellect when they meet Socrates frequently raise a chuckle; looking for him in the phone book under 'So-Crates' and connecting with his philosophical statements: "The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"
They even manage to find love, taking a couple of princesses out of medieval England back to San Dimas (no worrying about timelines here; Back to the Future this ain't). It all amounts to a fun time, with some great comedic moments, memorable characters and a large helping of positive vibes (sorry for using modern vernacular for which I am far too old).
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| Most non-triumphant. |
The sequel is more of the same but also different. This time, in a bit of a Terminator nod, two evil lookalike robots are sent back in time to kill Bill and Ted and take their place, thereby ruining the utopian future. De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) can't stand this future (his present) you see. He is, frankly, a miserable old man, determined to make everything as miserable as he is. To begin with, his plan succeeds, and Bill and Ted are promptly dispatched. But this is just where we get started.
This time round, instead of a trip through history, we explore the afterlife, covering possession ("I totally possessed my dad!"), hell, heaven (where apparently the entertainment of choice is Charades) and the classic trope of playing death to win a second chance. Hearing a frustrated Death (William Sadler) growl "You sunk my battleship" is one of the movie's great joys.
It gets really trippy in the final third, where given help by the almighty himself (in spite of mugging three people to sneak into heaven), they head back to the land of the living and with the help of a weird alien named Station build good robots to take on the evil robots. Eventually, De Nomolos is defeated and the guys use the time machine to take an intensive guitar course and come back and actually play well to an international audience. And so the future is assured...or so we think.
29 years later, we arrive at Bill and Ted Face the Music. The intervening decades have not been kind to Bill and Ted. From that peak at the end of Bogus Journey, their musical career has declined steadily as they try to write the song that ushers in the future paradise they were told they would write, with increasing desperation. When we catch up with them, they are performing weird Theremin-based abstract musical pieces at Missy's (Amy Stoch) wedding to Ted's little brother Deacon (Beck Bennett) (which is a cracking end to a running joke).
It seems after all this time, the endless positivity is beginning to fade, especially with Ted, who is positively brimming with unhappiness and anger. It's a good decision to go this way - I think trying to recreate that dumb good humour that was such a strength in the first two films would have been a mistake. Instead, it is their kids Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving) that bring the positivity, albeit with smarts rather than idiocy, as well as an encyclopaedic knowledge and boundless enthusiasm for every type of music there is.
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| Chips off the old block. |
The future is tired of waiting for Bill and Ted to bring it about, and faced with the fabric of reality falling apart, instead put in to action a plan based on a different theory; that Bill and Ted must die to bring about the future. And so, robot assassin Dennis Caleb McCoy (Anthony Carrigan) is despatched to destroy them. Dennis Caleb McCoy and his journey from killing machine to self aware repentant machine as he kills and sends to hell the wrong people by mistake is I think the flat out funniest part of Face the Music, and Bill and Ted travelling to the future to try to steal the elusive world-saving song from their future selves gives it some stiff competition. I think it's the bittersweet thing of Bill and Ted striving their whole lives for something that seems forever out of reach that makes their scenes a little tragi-comic rather than flat out funny.
In the more traditional Bill and Ted roles are Billie and Thea, as they try their best to help by recruiting some of the best musicians throughout history to help bring about the future utopia. The solution is quite sweet; it's actually Billie and Thea that create the song itself, but Bill and Ted still get their moment and the closure they'd been working for all those years. It's pretty joyous and a bit of a tonic for recent times. Watching the three together you can see how things are a little different nowadays; the brief moments of casual homophobia in the first two films are quite jarring, and it's pleasing (though not unexpected) to note it has not been continued for Face the Music. The same thing happens in the Lethal Weapon series; as that series progresses, you see Riggs's casual homophobia and racism fade as it becomes obvious how unpalatable it is. It's the kind of progress I'm here for.
It might not be everybody's cup of tea, but for me this trilogy is a sure fire mood lifter and I'm delighted that after years of trying, they managed to see the two lovable dudes off in style; the post credits old Bill and Ted jam session is exactly the ending I didn't know I needed.
Score:
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: 8/10
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey: 8/10
Bill and Ted Face the Music: 8/10
All three films have some pretty mixed reviews, but there are some out there that align quite closely to my thoughts; this review of Excellent Adventure from Jim at ZekeFilm, this one of Bogus Journey from Roger Ebert and this one of Face the Music from Chris at GameSpot.
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