Bill & Ted Face the Music

Nearly 30 years after the pair's last appearance, Bill S. Preston, Esquire (Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves) are back. And the world could certainly use them. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey told the story of how two teenage misfits would create a song to unite the world and birth a future utopia based on their music (despite all evidence to the contrary that they are completely incapable of doing so).

There were no lingering questions or threads for the franchise to wrap up as the end of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey offered an explanation of how the Bill and Ted could come up with the music that would change the world by making use of time travel as a life hack. Bill & Ted Face the Music offers a different answer, decades in the making. While Wyld Stallyns became famous based on their performance at the end of the second movie, that wasn't the performance that changed the world. Instead, the performance is about to happen and, not surprisingly, the pair have no idea on how to make it happen. Their attempt to fall back on using time travel to cheat destiny turns out to only make things worse.

As reality begins to unravel, Bill and Ted face trouble on multiple fronts with wives concerned about the state of their relationships, a robot from the future being sent back in time to kill them, and a clock quickly counting down to the moment of truth where Preston and Logan will need to save the world. Winter and Reeves fall back easily into old patterns helped by the film being written by the characters' creators Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. If the final act of the film feels a bit rushed and more than a little messy, the script does deliver an emotional payoff that makes the sequel definitely non-heinous.

While the princesses (Erinn Hayes and Jayma Mays) don't get large roles this time around, family is an important part of the film which introduces us to Bill's daughter Thea (Samara Weaving) and Ted's daughter Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) who play pivotal roles while giving us quite believable examples of what Bill and Ted's daughters would grow up to be like. Despite neither actress having seen the films growing up, they do the franchise proud providing the new ingredient to shake-up the story by making it multi-generational. Bill & Ted Face the Music is lighthearted and lightweight fare but it's also just the kind of feel good popcorn movie that 2020 could use.

• Title: Bill & Ted Face the Music
• IMDb: link