Middle-aged craziness with Bill and Ted

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/08/2020 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The best role Keanu Reeves ever had was Theodore (Ted) Logan in the movies Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991).

Ted is a sunny, well-intended knucklehead from San Dimas, Calif., whose credo is: “Be excellent to each other.” (Or: “Party on, dude.”) The role just squared up with his innate appeal.

In a way, it was such a good fit for the Canadian Reeves, it may have undermined all his subsequent work to some degree or other. (I remember the 1995 Manitoba Theatre Centre audience attending Hamlet, starring Reeves, and chuckling at his delivery of the line “I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.” Because, of course, “most excellent” was a Ted Logan expression.)

In any case, it’s mostly a pleasure to have Bill and Ted back, even if this decades-later sequel finds them in the deep throes of middle age.

If you remember the last films, it was foretold by a time traveller named Rufus (played by the late George Carlin) that Bill and Ted’s band Wyld Stallyns would inspire a Utopian society with their music seven centuries hence, assuming they could circumvent the plan’s of Ted’s dad to send him to military school.

Thus begat a time-travel escapade all intended to ensure Ted would pass a history exam.

But now, Bill and Ted’s own future is looking comparatively dim as they struggle to keep the band going, playing dismal gigs in empty lounges and Elks lodges. Their friendship remains so tight that they have to go to couple’s counselling with their spouses (you’ll recall they were medieval princesses snatched from the past), where it transpires the guys are more devoted to each other than their wives.

Once again, Bill and Ted are visited by a mysterious figure from the future. Kelly (Kristen Schaal), the daughter of Rufus, reminds them they are still “supposed to unite the world with song.” In the absence of such a tune, “reality will collapse and space and time will cease to exist.”

So… no pressure.

Bill and Ted once again employ the old time-travel phone booth, but this time, their mission is to find older versions of themselves and steal the song they are going to write, only to discover future Bills and Teds are… jerks.

Fortunately Bill and Ted’s respective daughters Thea (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) are a little more proactive (not to say smarter) and they also employ a time machine to track down a killer backup band for the ages. (Lundy-Paine does a lovely job of channelling Reeves’s voice and gangly physicality.)

Alas, there is another killer robot on their tail. Before long, Death himself (William Sadler in Seventh Seal death drag) comes back in the picture when the going gets dire, and this time, he’s not playing games.

Dean Parisot was a canny choice of director here, since he had some experience balancing dumb-fun comedy with conceptual kookery on Galaxy Quest. Screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon wrote the first two films and they’ve managed the trick of transitioning the two lovable stoner-types into the realm of middle age with a kind of goofy grace.

They’re still… out there. Dressed in tuxes for a wedding gig early in the film, they announce their intentions to perform their latest composition “That Which Binds Us Through Time: The Chemical, Physical and Biological Nature of Love: an Exploration of The Meaning of Meaning, Part 1.”

It’s a bit of a joke on how a beloved old band insists on adding new material to its set list. That dynamic is not in play in the film: It is very much of a piece with the previous Bill and Ted movies.

Sure, we may look sidelong on the arrested development of these dudes.

But the timing of the movie feels right. After all, we could all use a little Bill and Ted optimism in the face of catastrophe.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing