Sweet

In these troubled times, it was a pleasure to get to revisit our old friends with Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020). I was surprised by how emotional it made me.

It starts with Bill (Alex Winters) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) playing at the wedding of Missy to Ted's younger brother. They play their version of the Jazz Odyssey, with Keanu looping on theremin and Alex throat-singing Tuvan style - until Ted's dad, Hal Landon, Jr., pulls the plug. At least Bill and Ted's daughters, Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving) like it. But they love their father's, their father's music, and music in general. 

Bill and Ted are very discouraged when unloading their gear. It's be 25 years and they haven't come up with the song that unites the universe. Bill wants to keep trying, but Ted is almost ready to quit. He's worried that the princesses are getting fed up. Then a time egg appears, and Rufus' daughter, Kristen Schaal, appears to take them to the future to face the Great Leader. Alex isn't worried, because they love them in the future.

But the Great Leader isn't happy - time is coming unraveled, and they need to do the song thing in 71 minutes, or everything will end. So they grab Rufus' old phone booth from the museum, and head for their future to see if they have written the song yet.

They arrive a couple of years in their future, to find the Wyld Stallyns playing "We Who Are About to Rock" to a tiny audience. Future them are ragged, angry, depressed, and Ted has a bad goatee and drinks to much. They tell our Bill and Ted that everything went down the drain because they didn't write the song. The princesses left them and their daughters won't even talk to them. Future them are dicks. Bill can kind of handle it, but Bill is always so awkward with himself.

So, after rushing to couples therapy to try and make things better with the princesses, they of course make it worse. The princesses take of in the phone booth with their old selves to see if they can find a time that Bill and Ted will make them happy. 

Meanwhile, the daughters decide to help out. They borrow Schaal's time egg to go round up a band. They start with Jimi Hendrix, then use him to recruit Louis Armstrong, then Mozart, Ling Lun, and prehistoric drummer Grom (Beyonce drummer Patty Anne Miller). Then Dennis, a killer robot from the future kills them all. That gives them a chance to get William Sadler, the Grim Reaper, to join the band.

I think I first noticed it when Schaal introduced herself as Rufus' daughter. When we see a hologram of George Carlin as Rufus in the museum with his phone booth, I almost started crying - I didn't realize how much I had missed him. Then I realized that seeing Bill and Ted's determination to do the right thing, to show how much they love the princesses, and to try to save the universe - even with their limited brain-power - well, it got me. And when Jimi shows up (played by DazMann Still), I got goosebumps. 

It's not like these scenes are amazingly well done. But, like Bill and Ted, they are pure and full of generous good intentions. Maybe it's soppy, but this is a sweet movie.

It also has some interesting things to say about life - like how you can't just go to the future and skip over all the work. It's also about children - maybe Bill and Ted's big contribution to world unity is their daughters. That doesn't always quite show through: Weaving and Lundy-Paine do a pretty good job being modern, female versions of Bill and Ted, but are kind of non-entities. And the princesses (who are played by different actors in each movie) are even more blanks. But Bill and Ted are unwavering in their love and devotion. They, like us, may not really know these women, but they love them.

Maybe it's the pandemic, maybe the movie makes me think of the long-ago days of my own wasted youth. But this movie moved me.