Bill & Ted Face the Music

The third (and possibly final) installment in the Bill & Ted series, Bill & Ted Face the Music follows the title duo (Keanu Reeves’ Ted and Alex Winter’s Bill) as they’re forced to finally concoct the song that’s meant to unite the universe in harmony. Filmmaker Dean Parisot, working from Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon’s screenplay, does a nice job of picking up with the central protagonists almost 30 years after their previous adventure, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the lion’s share of kudos for the movie’s early success is due to Reeves and Winter’s stellar work as the now-iconic Bill and Ted – as the actors slip back into their respective characters’ shoes with an ease that, in addition to being utterly hypnotic, remains a consistent highlight in the progressively erratic proceedings. It’s disappointing to note, then, that the easygoing bent of Bill & Ted Face the Music‘s opening stretch is slowly-but-surely replaced by a more overtly frenetic and over-the-top feel, as the excessively busy narrative becomes less about the heroes’ exploits and more about periphery, less-than-enthralling happenings. (There is, for example, an entire subplot about Bill and Ted’s daughters, Samara Weaving’s Thea and Brigette Lundy-Paine’s Billie, and their efforts at collecting various musicians through time, with this mostly underwhelming digression ultimately coming off as a needless retread of the first movie’s storyline.) By the time the special-effects-heavy climax rolls around, Bill & Ted Face the Music has cemented its place as a sporadically charming yet hopelessly overblown sequel that could’ve benefited from a more low-key approach (ie the picture is, in the final analysis, more in line with Bogus Journey than Excellent Adventure).

** out of ****