Bill & Ted Face the Music (Movie Review)

Keanu Reeves continues to ride the wave of last year's Keanussance with Bill & Ted Face the Music, the third film in the long-dormant Bill & Ted franchise. It's been more than two decades since I last saw the previous movies, and I purposely didn't rewatch them prior to seeing this one, just so I could assess it on its own terms. And I've got to say, the new film was just as excellent as I'd hoped it would be.

The movie has Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves reprising their roles as the titular duo. It's been 25 years since their last adventure, and now the pair of aging rockers are dealing with a new kind of dilemma: writer's block. Tasked with coming up with a song that is supposed to prevent the end of the world, the two of them must once again journey through time in a phone booth as they search for that song. This time around though, they receive some much-needed help from their daughters, Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving). 

Both girls manage to get their hands on a time machine of their own, and now they are busy trying to put together the most epic band imaginable, with a lineup that includes Louis Amstrong, Jimi Hendrix and even Mozart. But with a time-travelling robot sent to kill their dads, ala The Terminator (but much tackier), and a convergence of space and time taking place all around them, our heroes must race against time itself as they try to stay one step ahead of the apocalypse that is sure to follow.

Bill & Ted Face The Music was yet another solid entry in a franchise that turns out to have aged surprisingly well. Both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter slip back into their roles so effortlessly that I found myself wondering why it has taken this long for them to do another sequel. I hadn't seen the previous films since I was a kid like I said, but I could tell that the greatest care had been taken to honor the legacy they'd established.

The rest of the cast managed to hold their own, with newcomers like Samara Weaving fitting quite nicely into the world. The film had surprise guest appearances from two of my favorite musicians as well, which I won't be spoiling here of course, so you'll just have to see the movie for yourself to find out who they were. Be sure to stick around until the very end though, because the film also had one of the best post-credits scenes I've seen in a while.

At just over 80 minutes long, the movie was just the right length it needed to be. There were plenty of laughs crammed into that short runtime, as well as several callbacks to the previous movies in the series. And as a long-time fan with the vaguest of memories, I thought the film was a righteous good time with a surprisingly poignant message about coming together as one, coming at a time when it is needed the most.