Bill & Ted Face The Music in a sequel that’s neither excellent nor completely bogus
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Note: The writer of this review watched Bill & Ted Face The Music from home on a digital screener. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Click here for an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
If you squint a little, the original Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure counts as edutainment. After all, the 1989 comedy revolved around two teenage slackers who used a time machine to kidnap historical figures, all in hopes of passing an upcoming exam. And though it played mostly fast and loose with the textbook stuff, the plot has, in the years since, made the movie an unlikely favorite of high-school history teachers. That lesson-plan-friendly element was tossed like a roach from the window of a beat-up Subaru for the sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, but it returns in a hybridized, even more dubiously educational form in the 29-years-later threequel Bill & Ted Face The Music. Here, historical figures—both real and made up—party alongside robots with low self-esteem, alternate future selves, cameoing celebrities, and, of course, Death.
True to the surfer-dude spirit of its boneheaded leads, Bill & Ted Face The Music has a laidback quality that makes it less overstimulating than it could have been, given its multiple storylines and chaotic cast of characters. As the plot kicks into gear, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are tasked by Kelly (Kristen Schaal), daughter of George Carlin’s time-traveling tour guide, to write a song that will save the world from temporal collapse. Problem is, they only have 75 minutes to do it. To make the deadline, the now middle-aged pals set out on a journey to find versions of themselves that have already written the song so they can plagiarize their own work. Meanwhile, their daughters, Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving), embark on a parallel quest to assemble the best backing band ever, which ends up including both the iconic (DazMann Still as Jimi Hendrix) and the available (Kid Cudi as himself).
Bill & Ted Face The Music doesn’t find its rhythm until these two storylines converge an hour in, which means that this 88-minute movie is basically over before it really begins. Up to that point, director Dean Parisot (of Galaxy Quest fame) and writers Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson (who also scripted Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey) bounce from scenario to scenario like they’re flipping through the channels of an all-Bill & Ted cable package. It’s an approach that allows for some fun moments, like Reeves and Winter in spandex and wigs squatting at Dave Grohl’s house, as well as the performance of a Wyld Stallyns composition called “That Which Binds Us Through Time—The Chemical, Physical, And Biological Nature Of Love And The Exploration Of The Meaning Of Meaning, Pt. 1.” But there are missed opportunities, too. Why cast Barry’s Anthony Carrigan as the aforementioned insecure murder droid and then do nothing fun with him until the movie is almost over?
To fill all that time up front, Face The Music largely focuses on the middle-aged ennui that sends Bill, Ted, and their wives, Elizabeth (Erinn Hayes) and Joanna (Jayma Mays), into marriage counseling. Bill and Ted were never deep characters, but the film’s superficial treatment of their personal crises makes it feel like they’ve been kept in cryogenic storage for 29 years waiting to be defrosted, rather than rocking out and raising their kids and strengthening their family bonds over the years that have passed. Anyway, it’s not like the film needed another thread to tie up.
The characters haven’t changed much, but CGI technology definitely has. Bill & Ted Face The Music takes advantage of those improvements with a plethora of scenes set in the future and in Hell, both upgraded from relatively modest sets to epic green-screen environments. These are a welcome alternative to the utterly generic suburban locations the characters otherwise occupy. But aside from the scene-stealing return of William Sadler, reprising his role as Death himself from Bogus Journey, the addition of characters from these fantasy realms doesn’t bring all that much to the story.
The Bill & Ted movies derive much of their humor from the blending of extremely low and extremely high stakes. Face The Music kind of blows it on the former: For all the preaching about the importance of togetherness and unity, the film mostly keeps its fiftysomething stars and their kids apart. Which is a shame, as the younger Logan and Preston are a hoot—particularly Lundy-Paine, who replicates Reeves’ dopey facial expressions and burnout inflection with precision. And while the high stakes couldn’t be higher, the film simply takes too long to find its focus. It’s not the most excellent of outcomes, but not a total bummer, either.
180 Comments
I’d wager quite a lot that it’s much worse than this review lets on.
The reviews I’ve seen are pretty consistent. If you liked the earlier films, you’ll like this. Bill and Ted is basically a stoner comedy without drugs and those have a pretty low bar to clear.
The first one basically made a PG-Cheech and Chong with a heavy dose of history. The second sets them up in a fun silly version, still PG, still entertaining. They could have done 2-3 more in the 90s and nobody would have minded. 29 years later…I’ll still like it but I’m going to have a sad because it just isn’t going to be nostalgia good.
What if you liked the first one but thought the second was crap (aside from the Uranus joke and Bill complaining that their album covers lied to them about what Hell looks like)?
I saw this yesterday and I’ll say it’s better than the reviews let on. It’s fun in a shaggy-dog kinda way–just like the first two. Paine and Weaving steal the film–they are separated from B&T for most of the movie but the opening scene wonderfully establishes how much they are their fathers’ daughters, so it’s actually ok.) I’m wondering if reactions to this review aren’t going to reveal some generational divides–the humor here is very Generation X, slack, smart, irreverent, not giving a goddamn about doing anything political, and imagining a musical culture closer to 1995 than now. In a way it’s a perfect escapist film for now, but I imagine a lot of Zoomers will find it dated in a bad way. BTW that godawful High Fidelity remake would have been salvageable if it starred Paine and Weaving instead of charisma vacuum Zoe Kravitz.
but but but………zoe is an IMPORTANT “star”Bwah-hahhaha-hahhahaa………..just like Jaden Smith
I think this like this is supposed to tell Zoomers to “get lost.” It’s comfort food nostalgia for Gen Xers and Millennials to watch with their kids.
Is Billie Bill’s daughter and Thea Ted’s daughter? Or vice versa? Could see them naming their kids after themselves, but also after each other.
Even better if they revamped the story so that Weaving’s character started the record shop after experiencing the events of Ready or Not, and she now has Satanic powers and the pretentious hipsters who think vinyl is somehow better than 21st century technology die horribly after purchasing cursed records in her shop.
You are getting a lot of stars on this, including mine, because we want to believe you! I want to enjoy it and as a Gen Xer my chances are pretty good (also I have an excellent track record with this sort of thing: I found things to enjoy about the Zoolander sequel out of loyalty to the first one, and I tried to convince my friends The Phantom Menace was pretty okay as we were leaving the theater).
I’m on the young Gen X / old Millennial borderline and I had the same reaction. I enjoyed the original movies as a kid, but re-watching them now one thing that really feels dated is the idea that an all-white 90s prog rock band would not just dominate their contemporary music scene, but would endure for hundreds of years and become the basis for a future society.Well, they kind of took the piss out of that idea by depicting them as has-beens / never-weres (thus undermining the entire premise of the franchise), but at the end of the movie, reality is saved with the help of an extended prog rock number written by… the daughters, which sounds pretty much like the Wild Stallyns music heard in the first two movies. The presence of Kid Cudi notwithstanding, the whole thing still feels like a Gen X fantasy, given the level to which Bill & Ted’s kids uncritically adore Gen X culture. On the one hand, the film depicts a typical Gen X fear that we never really got to make our mark when we were supposed to, and now the rest of society has moved on to a new moment that excludes us. But the movie bends over backwards to assuage this fear — don’t worry Gen Xers, it’s the children who are wrong and will eventually come around to celebrating your awesomeness — and I have to imagine that would rub younger viewers the wrong way.
B&T’s proggy indulgences may have failed them, but I think the most Gen X thing about the daughters was how they nerded out on music and travelled in time to put together the best band possible–that sense of needing to master, and opine on, the history of music is something I don’t see a lot anymore.
You sound fun!
I don’t think I quite have my head together right now, I admit.
I love the first, but even as a stupid kid I knew it wasn’t technically a “good” movie. I mean I’d love to see something that defies expectations but… We were never going to get Twin Peaks Season 3 with Bill and Ted.
Questions about what’s good or bad in popular entertainment are really “good for what purpose”.
why?
I’d say the opposite applies and it’s a lot, lot better. I agree with Katie re: the storyline with Elizabeth and Joanna, but disagree with pretty much everything else.
Incorrect. It’s wonderful.
Don’t care, will watch, will love.
*most sincere air guitar sting*
You’re sure to have ample opportunity when it’s on cable every weekend for the next ten years.
What’s cable?
What’s a “weekend”?
According to Loverboy, it’s the time period that everybody was working for.
Every day of the week anymore. “Jerry, you’re unemployed. Every day is a vacation for you.”
Why is Gamora?
Did you travel forward in time 15 years to make this comment?
Same here. I’m not looking for high art in my Bill and Ted movie
And yet the best gag in the films is an extended riff on The Seventh Seal so you do get high art in your Bill and Ted movie!
This review makes it sound like exactly like what I expect from Bill and Ted: 30 years later. Sign me up.
watched it this morning, was fun. it moves right along, and i had several moments where i laughed out loud. enjoy!
Watched, loved, don’t care what the reviewers said. This is the kind of a stupid feel-good movie I really needed this year.
You had me at Erinn Hayes.
They had me at “Bill & Ted”.
I always do a double-take when I see Erinn Hayes, because I think it’s Rose Byrne. It happened to me last night when I caught some of They Came Together on HBO.
This is my saddest “called it”
Neither excellent nor completely bogus is how I’d describe the first two.
why does everyone clutch their pearls when they see a c+? c+ isn’t really a bad review. sounds like i’ll enjoy most of it but it isn’t perfect…isn’t that kind of exactly right for a bill & ted movie?
Probably the same reason people recoil at a 7/10 or 70 Metacentric score. They want to spend their time playing and watching the absolute best, critically speaking — instead of indulging in a Guilty Pleasure every once in a while.
For reference: If you brought home a C+ book report and showed your Mom, would she say “Hey! That’s pretty good! Keep it up, sonny boy!”Cuz my Mom would see that glass as half empty.
Yeah when people say a “C” grade just means “average” I wonder if they went to high school or college. “C” was pretty much a failing grade for most of us.
It’s all about perspective: it’s just more appropriate for people to interpret movie & TV review letter grades like they’re for low-priority electives in one’s early high-school years, rather than like they’re for vital courses while trying to get into an Ivy League university.
If i came home with a C, it was “pack your bags.” One time I dared to say “but C means average.”
“WE ARE *NOT* AVERAGE!”
“What about average-plus?”
So, your parents are shit-sucking asswipes?
Sounds like you had shitty parents. A “C” is a passing grade. Not all kids are going to excel at all subjects and college is just plain hard. I’m proud of my kids when they gets As and Bs but I don’t concern myself with the occasional C on a report card.
Maybe these days with grade inflation, but that’s the whole problem. Somebody getting an A should be exceptional — maybe 5% or at most 10% of students should be getting an A. Nowadays it’s like half.
That comes down to a philosophy of what you want grades to mean. Opinions vary.
The one you like, where you use grades to rank order students on a normal curve of expected grades, is decidedly old school and in my opinion, dickish. I signed up for a calc class once where the prof was practically salivating telling us how 68% of us would get a C, a handful would get As and a handful would get an F because of how he applied his curve. Dropped it the 2nd day of class.
I retook it next term from a much chiller prof and got a B+ because he used grades to reflect mastery of material. If every student comes out of a class showing they understand the material substantially and can apply it, then by all means, A’s for everyone. If everyone does terrible, then D’s and F’s abound. But also at that point you should also be reflecting on your teaching really fucking hard.
When I did my master’s degree, a C was failing. Because based on the mastery-of-material metric, if you only have an average understanding of material at the graduate level, then you have no business being there. You *ought* to have an exceptional understanding if you’re in grad school.
If every student comes out of a class showing they understand the
material substantially and can apply it, then by all means, A’s for
everyone. If everyone does terrible, then D’s and F’s abound. But also
at that point you should also be reflecting on your teaching really
fucking hard.True. On the other hand, if nearly everyone gets an A or B, it is possible that you are an amazing teacher. On the other hand it could be that the students are achieving “mastery of the material” because you are basically teaching a useless easy course that doesn’t challenge the students intellectually. Students at the time love professors who grade easily. But looking back now twenty years since I got my doctorate, both my undergraduate and graduate professors who actually challenged me were far more useful to my research today.
“The one you like, where you use grades to rank order students on a normal curve of expected grades, is decidedly old school and in my opinion, dickish.”
Not only that, but functionally useless outside your class. There’s no practical use to a curve ranking an arbitrary group of 25 students against each other in the real world, which is arguably why no one cares about grades after you graduate. Whereas if an A reflects a thorough understanding of the material, and an F reflects the opposite, that might have some actual value to people who aren’t you.
Most of the upper-level calc courses I took in college, the curve was entirely upward. Like a 56% on an exam got you a B. The engineering students who were mindful of their GPA told me they audited their advanced courses once and then take them for credit the second time.
That’s ridiculous. A’s are for people who learned all, or nearly all, the information. Grades in school should not be comparative. Should only 50% of people know how to read? No. Everyone should know how to read. And if everyone knows how to read that isn’t grade inflation. There was a time when most people couldn’t read. Was it because most people didn’t have the capacity? Or was it because societies didn’t have the resources or the will to teach reading?
Summary: None of us are special.
I don’t mean to be rude, but some people just are smarter than others. And I’m not saying I’m the smartest. I probably was in the small high school that I went to, but as an undergraduate I learned some humility when I encountered numerous people smarter than me. And when I went to get my doctorate probably 50% of my fellow graduate students were smarter than me. Yes, there are always smart people who just don’t have the opportunities in life, but if you look at people with equal opportunities some people just are smarter. Egalitarianism is fine if it means than everyone should be treated the same in terms of the law (and obviously they aren’t in practice, which sucks), but egalitarianism in the belief that everyone has equal abilities is misguided.
Indeed?In Canada (at least in the province I’m in), in university, a C is ‘satisfactory’. A B is ‘good’ and an A is ‘excellent’
Mine would, but I’m a terminal underachiever.
“C’s get degrees” is my family motto
“C’s get degrees” is my family motto I like to use the following:Did you know that 50% of all med students graduate in the bottom half of their class?And, Do you know what they call the med student that graduates last in their class? Doctor.
“Did you know that 50% of all med students graduate in the bottom half of their class?”It would be worthwhile to specify you’re talking about when they’re in med school – and not that half of all med students were poor performers in their undergraduate careers prior to entry into med school.
As was mine, however the real world can be quite different, I just had to take a certification exam where the passing grade was 80%..actually had to try to get that title..
Please let us know if any of your family are surgeons or lawyers.
No surgeons yet, but a few doctors. Got a cousin who works at the Mayo Clinic. My Nephew is starting med school in the fall though and goal is still neurosurgeon. One Lawyer, who is my uncle and probably the dumbest person in my family, and not just because he is a MAGA idiot.Sadly my direct family didn’t get the medicine or legal gene, we are all engineers mostly. We will see where my kids land.
But I bet Bill & Ted’s parents would be thrilled if either of them brought home a C+.
Literally the basis of the first movie is that Ted’s father demands excellence from his slacker son. Bill’s is getting laid on the reg, so maybe doesn’t care so much.
I know Ted’s dad is a hard-ass, but I got the impression he’d just rather his son not keep bringing home Fs. If Ted were bringing home C+s, his dad might still be a dick, but it’d be harder to make the case to ship him off to military school
But I bet Bill & Ted’s parents would be thrilled if either of them brought home a C+.
Luckily we can kill two birds with one stone and just ask Missy for both.
Ted’s dad made him bring home an A+ under threat of being shipped off to military school.
Ah
i don’t think that has anything to do with movies being criticized. if you get a c+ on a book report that means you didn’t follow the teachers instructions on how to properly do a book report. that c+ isn’t an opinion, it’s based on a set criteria. just like if you get an a+ on a book report it doesn’t mean it’s the best book report ever, it just means you followed instructions.
The comparison is apples to apples. I would say that movie critics have criteria even though they deal with subjective media. I would say that teachers, while having criteria, also include a substantial helping of subjective opinion when they grade. I disagree that getting an A+ means you just followed the instructions well. There’s been many a B- given out for the stale toast of “just followed the instructions.” To the film grade, though. C, to anyone but someone trying to spin it, indicates a pretty bleh movie. Think the producers are happy with a c+? I think they were shooting higher, somehow.
i think i’m doing that internet thing i hate where i get too into the weeds with the specifics of the metaphor than the overall point you’re trying to make. taking it way back to your point – yeah my mom would have been fine with a c+ and wouldn’t make me feel weird about it.
Would that my Mom were so amiable. Either way, I loved and love both B&T movies and would see this no matter the grade. Even F or Incomplete.
Some of us were on drugs and barely went to school. You gotta keep the expectations low
C+ is a bad review. Hell, I’m a little leery of a B. If the question is, “Will I be happy I watched this?” then I mentally translate the grades as:C+: Bad movie. Not execrably bad, but also not entertainingly bad. Stay away.B-: Not a good movie, but maybe if you’re bored and into the genre an OK time killer. Otherwise stay away.B: Fine. Entertaining but forgettable.B+: Good movie, worth watching if you get a chance.A-: Great movie, try to catch.A: See it.I know the AV Club probably wouldn’t define the grades this way, but this is my personal interpretation of them.
Spot on!
Agreed – the number of reviews below a C+ pretty much proves that it’s not an average grade.
It’s a great chart, but I’d still like to see some examples. Ideally using John Travolta movies.
C+:Face OffB-: Grease.B: The Boy in the BubbleB+: Urban CowboyA-: Saturday Night FeverA: Pulp FictionBut there are a whole host of Ds, Es and Fs in his filmography.
C’mon, Face Off deserves better than C+! That movie is entertaining as hell.
*sigh*. Now I know how Katie feels…
I did my John Travolta list without seeing PF77’s, which makes for a useful point: the “Would I be happy if I watched this?” scale is inherently subjective:A: Pulp Fiction
A-: Saturday Night FeverB+: Get ShortyB: Face/OffB-: Look Who’s TalkingC+: I dunno, Broken Arrow? Swordfish?D+: Wild HogsF: Battlefield Earth / GottiWorth noting that I haven’t seen anything on this list after Face/Off, which makes sense given my feelings about B- and below. I’m rating the bad ones based on reputation. Also: Face/Off is objectively bad, but also good. Also: I deliberately excluded Grease, because it’s the sort of nostalgia classic that is hard to categorize. Do I want to watch Grease right now? Not really. Do I have fond memories if it? Yes, I do.
Yes, Face/Off is dumb as hell, the schmaltz and melodrama are ridiculous, but its also entertaining as hell and I have watched it multiple times over the last 20+ years! Also, you managed to rate Swordfish pretty much spot on despite not having seen it. Its as dumb as Face/Off but not as fun, it has a few (but not enough) cool action beats and effects, a few memorably stupid/ridiculous scenes or twists, and topless Halle Berry. Its basically a D+ movie that did all the extra credit assignments and skated to a C or a C+.
see i dunno, c+ to me usually means ‘under scrutiny it’s not a success, but fans of this type of movie probably won’t have those problems’ like at the end of the day a critics job is to criticize, right? a fans job is to consooooom.
No. Those are off, because the scale goes down to “F” which moves “C” a bit farther from the bottom.“F” has even been established here as “bad enough to be interesting to see, if you’re into that kind of thing,” and “D” being the grade that says “just fucking don’t.”
Ha, yeah, I mean if you’re waiting for an “A” as an imperative to see a movie, then I might venture that perhaps you’re not that interested in watching movies? Even in a solid year, when has the AVC given more than half a dozen movies an “A”?
That’s a weird take. As stated, anything that is B or up is on the table. I’m pretty sure I watch way more movies in the theater than most people (and I have a kid). I would put this differently: there are about 600 movies released per year, almost two per day. If I’m never going to get a chance to see the large majority of them, why shouldn’t I hold out for the ones that aren’t at least very good?There’s also another factor here, that should maybe be obvious: I’m a harsher critic than a lot of other people. That’s not a value judgment, it just seems to be true.
It’s just a very weird universe to me where the description of a “B-” includes the words “otherwise stay away.” Like, you *can* have a grading system where you’re getting up to “B+” and you’re still saying “oh, yeah, if you get around to it,” and you’re leery of a three-star review (which is what a B is), but I personally wouldn’t find that very useful. And yeah, sure, A- or above only if you’re trying to protect yourself from seeing something that’s less than “very good” but I’d just say, you don’t learn as much about movies only watching stuff where it’s purported to be very good.
Believe it or not, I’ve seen plenty of shitty movies. More than enough.If you’re saying a B is three-star review, that seems to track pretty well to my scale. That means C+ is, what, two stars? The lowest number of stars is one (and no, there isn’t a smooth scale from D+ to F — these movies all suck). C+ is a bad movie. Half a step up from a bad movie is one that you should probably avoid unless you are really excited about the genre.You live in a universe where you are paid to watch movies. I don’t think you’re thinking hard enough about how these ratings translate into whether someone should shell out $15 and three hours of their time.
I do enjoy watching movies more than most people, but I don’t think $15 and three hours (assume you’re adding travel time in there) is actually that big an investment, all told. (And I say that as the parent of a small child.) To say nothing of the many ways it can cost less than that.
C+ isn’t a bad movie by most reasonable standards, is what I’m saying. If you use a four-star scale, it should work out roughly like this:* * * * = A* * * 1/2 = A-/B+* * * = B / B-* * 1/2 = C+* * = C/C-* 1/2 = D+ / D* = D/D-/FTotally agree that it blurs together a bit at the bottom, but I feel like you’re arguing that it blurs together a bit once you go below * * * 1/2. I don’t think your system allows for those times where you watch a movie and it’s not PERFECT or in consideration for your best movies of the year, but within its chosen genre or modest goals, it gets the job done. That’s why C+/**1/2 doesn’t register as “bad movie” to me. Mixed reviews! They’re a thing!
Yep. That’s exactly the way I’ve trained myself at seeing the grades over the years here at AVC. Since Ds are pretty rare and Fs are almost unheard of, Cs typically seem to be the grade most “bad” movies actually get around here. If I watch a movie that’s been given a C grade from AVC, I typically come out thinking it was bad and/or forgettable. Now while I personally would rate said movie as D or an F because I do think Cs should mean “average, pleasant enough but not memorable”, that just hasn’t been the case with how grading has worked from what I’ve observed here for years
C+ = rotten tomatoB- … does notCannot agree with the C+ for Infinity War just for audacity of the ending alone. I think at the very least, the film has to be some sort of B.
It’s people buying into the bullshit Uber/delivery app metric where satisfactory performance is supposed to receive the maximum score and anything that isn’t all of the stars is as good as none of the stars.If anything lower than a B is basically a failing grade, as a couple commenters have claimed, there’s no reason to use a letter scale or 5 point scale. Just give a score of Yes, Maybe, or No.
Not failing (for movies), but certainly doesn’t put one on the list of films I will take the effort to seek out. C+ is basically “this is a movie. It’s OK.”
“C+ is basically “this is a movie. It’s OK.”That seems fitting for this series. I do question how many Bill & Ted fans directly paid to see either movie the first several times that they watched it. To me they’re quintessential “randomly catch them on cable on a summer afternoon” movies.
I mean, the film critics so famous their names still define the medium despite both being dead for years didn’t even bother with Maybe.
Sure they did. What else would you call a Thumbs Up from Ebert and a Thumbs Down from Siskel? A split decision equaled a maybe. Both of those guys used their respective papers’ preferred style in terms of grading with stars in their individual writing, but I think they would have been fine using a ternary grading system in print as well as on the show.
It’s people buying into the bullshit Uber/delivery app metric where
satisfactory performance is supposed to receive the maximum score and
anything that isn’t all of the stars is as good as none of the stars.
spoken by someone whose job is not connected to 5 stars on TripAdvisor…
friends, if you need to give a bad review, give 5 stars and a shit review, unless your life was endangered.
friends, if you want to gove a good review, give 5 stars. Your “only Jesus is perfect / i’m trying to be accurate” bullshit is costing someone business. Say NOTHING before you give 4 stars, i had a job (tour guide with Intrepid) where less than 4.7 average wold get you fired.
I’ll never forgive or forget the AV Club’s D grade for DREDD: a movie that delivered the absolutely flawless mix of Karl Urban scowling, wearing the helmet the entire running length, and muttering “motherFUCKER” when that corrupt judge got his head blown off.
They gave THAT a D?!?
I’m going to have to read it so I can guess what trauma happened to the reviewer to explain such a bad call. That was a …pretty good movie?
Still baffles me to this day and it ended my trust in the film reviews on this site.
If money and free evenings were no object, sure, C+ means maybe it’s not a bad time. But they are limited. That maybe-not-a-bad-time might mean having to pass on New Mutants, Tenet, Mulan, and Wonder Woman 1984.
If we’re doing a scale of 1 – 10:A:10, A-:9, B+:8, B:7, B-:6, C+:5, C:4, C-:3, D: 2 and F:1I don#t think it’s a perfect translation but it’s a similar curve – and 5/10 doesn’t suggest a good film to me. (I’m hoping Katie and I just differ on this one, though it’ll be a few weeks before I get to see it)
To me a C is a “well, at least you tried” grade. So I guess this is “well, at least you tried, plus.”
well i also think not all c+’s are created equal. a c+ for a prestige drama definitely veers more to ‘you tried’. but, a c+ for a threequel 20 years after the fact reads to me more like ‘well you’re probably going to like this if you’re a fan of X property, but judged on its own as a movie it’s not entirely successful’ and again, i think a 75/100 ain’t half bad (literally!)someone brought up the infamous avengers: infinity war c+, which always felt like a fair grade to me *ducks*. obviously as a marvel fan i loved it deeply, but if you showed that movie to a normal person, who hadn’t seen any other marvel movie, they’d presumably be like ‘the action rocked and it had some really fun dialogue, but the pacing is insane, i have no idea who most of these characters are, it bounces all over the place and then ends on a cliffhanger.’ i always try to look at things like ‘just because i like it doesn’t make it good, and just because i dislike it doesn’t make it bad’. for example i fucking hate the wizard of oz but it’s not a bad movie by almost any metric.
Funny, it seems to oddly be the one most non-Marvelheads had a generally positive opinion of. My brother, for a contributor to the anecdata, watched a Marvel flick here or there but never really watched anything after Phase I. He went to Infinity War on a lark and ended up really enjoying it. He pointed out that the pace is such that you never really have to ask yourself who all these people are, because the movie makes clear what they intend to do or must do, and so everything flows perfectly naturally from there. Backstory is almost superfluous.
C isn’t bad but it is mediocre. It’s usually assigned to movies that are technically well done but don’t have anything special about them. Considering how expensive movie tickets are, C mostly means “not worth the prize of admission”.So in a way, it’s a both a passing and a failing grade at once.
It is probably not very good, but still should have been a B- rating, just becasue Reeves is such a good dude and we are living through 2020, so any new content to watch automatically gets a bump.
Funnily enough I bet Dowd would have given this his highest mark possible, B-.
Where I work, a C+ is a 67. That’s considered ‘satisfactory’.
I ended up coming to read this article because Rotten Tomatoes considers a C+ to be rotten, but the blurb didn’t match. The film’s score is right at 80% overall, which by my count would be just a point or two higher than the score Katie gave it.
Yah. It’s not like most AV Club writers have ever been shy about calling unwatchable dreck exactly that.
Yeah C+ means you passed. Although I would have given it a B-.
Having just finished watching it, I feel like it’s at least a solid B-.
Aaccording to Metacritic, this is the equivalent to a 58. The movie could’ve been better sure. Technically C+ is passing. I think I have more issues with Metacritic’s scoring system than I do with this review. One gripe: they only said “Station!” once and it was an afterthought. Also, Dave Grohl should have been in the backing band!
Excellent Adventure is a lot of fun, and is very rewatchable, but Bogus Journey is a really underestimated, and absolutely insane, movie. It sort of reminds me of Gremlins 2 in that it’s a sequel that just totally went for it with ball to the wall weirdness. It doesn’t surprise me that this movie sounds like it’s more in line with the first one, though it’s slightly disappointing.
I just don’t like Bogus Journey. The first one is so fun, and the second one is pretty miserable (other than Sadler).That’s not saying that it’s bad, but it’s kindof the Temple of Doom to Excellent Adventure’s Raiders.
Another good reason to love it.
If you have seen Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) with its famous chess match against Death (who is costumed almost identically to Bill and Ted’s version), the games of Battleship and Twister that B&T play against Death in the second are easily the funniest part of either of the two movies.
Yeah, Death is pretty great, but watching these happy-go-lucky goofballs get tortured in hell just feels….wrong.
But the “tortures” are pretty silly and fairly mild. Having to kiss your gnarly grandmother or do infinity pushups isn’t exactly having a car battery hooked up to your genitals.
Killing the goofballs off in the first 10 minutes is certainly part of it, but Bogus Journey is also just a much meaner movie.The first one doesn’t really have any bad guys: the princesses’ father is an obstacle but he’s pretty minor, and Ted’s dad is a killjoy, but that’s about it. Napoleon is theoretically an antagonist, but he’s one of the most fun parts.The second one spends way too much time (for me, anyway) with the robots and the evil future guy, who just aren’t much fun.Movies don’t have to be all fun all the time, obviously. But the first one really is, which makes the 2nd kindof a downer.
I’ve never seen Bogus Journey but I did read the novalization as a kid (Scholastic book fair around when the movie came out). From what I remember it was enjoyable. I mean you have robot duplicates and Death, it hard to screw that up.
Oh, wow, I’m not the only person who read the novelization of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey!The book is a bit different from the movie, if I remember correctly, but it’s been so long I’ve lost the details.
They could have found a middle point by doing a Werner Herzog monologue over this one.
A C means average so a C+ means an above average movie which, coming from a classic/inide/foreign film guy like myself means a perfectly fine time-killer. Our culture has grown so fucking narcissistic that everyone expects everything they like to get an A minimum (and, honest to god, people will shit their pants “their” movie didn’t get that +.) I wouldn’t rate any Bill and Ted flick above a C+ and will happily let one play in the background whenever I stumble across one on TV.In all honesty, the vast majority of movies this site gives an A to are C+ to B at best. Pretty much all the television is C and all the music is overwhelmingly D quality, on a good day.
If you were sad enough to compile the stats for AV Club reviews, I don’t think you’d find the average come out at C.
A decade ago you would have seen a “C” average because they reviewed a wide range of stuff including a lot that didn’t fit into the particular taste this site is catering to.
There are a lot fewer reviews now especially in TV and those are usually shows that are prestige or already have buzz or a fanbase so I think the average would skew pretty high.
Fair point.
Well you brought your own stuff to this post
Don’t burn yourself on that hot take, Boomer.
I still have trouble with the grade inflation of today. I was a C student both in high school and college, and back in the 1970’s and 1980’s it was not a failing grade. In my case, it meant I generally knew the material, but was not putting my best effort forward in classes that didn’t interest me. I guess my high school grades would barely get me into community college nowadays, but I’m pretty sure I know as much in my subject as most people getting an A nowadays.That said, it seems like the reviewers grew up in the grade inflation era, and on this site anything in the “C” range is failure(or not the right kind of arty hipster garbage), and below that is just ranking the egregiousness of the failure.
Maybe it’s been too long between films, but my opinion of Bill & Ted has gone from mildly entertaining when the first film was released in my teen years to annoying and worth avoiding in my late 40s. Hollywood’s depiction of metalheads has always been off, thanks to Bill & Ted, Wayne’s World, and Beavis & Butt-head.
I 100% expected this to be most heinous, so I’m happy with it being average. I mean, like others pointed out, B&T was never amazing, it just happened to be extremely quotable.
Look, if you were already going to give this movie a mediocre to positive score you might as well have gone all in:
69 is general considered a D+ grade in school though
Bill & Ted Get Plastic Surgery, Dude. Still, I wouldn’t mind a sequel to “Freaked”.
My favorite Randy Quaid role ever.ALEX: Hey, Zygro 24! You’re not supposed to have that stuff!RANDY: Oh, yeah? Well I guess I’m not supposed to have THESE, either, am I?!
ALEX: AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Styrofoam cup…
Dat sock be fulla holes, mon.
12 milkmen is THEORETICALLY possible. 13 is just silly.
Hi, I’m the sucker who got emotional during a Bill & Ted sequel, merely at the prospect of there being a world where everyone could set aside their differences and live in harmony. It also helped that I only recently watched Bogus Journey and I thought it dragggggged, so this was a breezy delight.
Just saw it, it was exactly the movie it should be. I was worried it would come off as an imitation but I feel they nailed it and everyone involved seemed to care that it wouldn’t be like most “sequels done way after the last film” have been like…this one is actually good. It’s a very brisk movie too, it gets to the point quickly and lasts as long as it should and it has a nice wanky ending too that fits the series.This movie wasnt set out to be a cinema masterpiece, it was meant to be a fun movie where for an hour and a half it takes your mind off things. It’s the sort of film where it would come on TV and no matter where you join it, you’d just watch it.
Oh for goodness sake. We need to have a discussion about grade inflation. C is average. The reason no one likes getting a C anymore is that 1) there has been grade inflation and an average performance can earn you an A or a B, and 2) no one likes to think of themselves as average. A is supposed to be reserved for an outstanding performance. In other words, a performs that stands out from the other performances. If everyone is getting an A, who the heck are they standing out from?Here is how my college Chem101 class was graded in 1983. The scores fell on a bell curve. A big chunk of students in the middle of the curve got Cs. Some a little to the right got Bs. A very limited number of students on the far right of the curve got As. Nearly all of us learned enough fundamental chemistry that we were ready for the next class.Grade inflation has also been applied to movie reviews as far as I can tell. Lots of perfectly average, ridiculously mundane movies gets Bs and above. (I’m seeing this, though, regardless of grade.)
Thanks for clarifying the absolutely objective, unarguable truth about grades for all the rest of us.Also, C doesn’t mean “average”, usually. It often means “satisfactory” on many grading rubrics – like you’ve successfully accomplished what you were tasked with doing, but didn’t exceed expectations in any way. You did what was required… and maybe there’s some sloppiness, or imprecision, but you got it done. What you seem to be doing is confusing “satisfactory” with “average”, where average is more of a frequentist inference stating that, on average, most people get C’s. It’s difficult to make that sort of claim because there are a lot of movies, of vastly different qualities, genres, and more, and a lot of different reviewers for each of those movies of different quality and genres. So, pretty hard to make some sort of frequency argument about what average is. But, you can more easily make an argument as to whether a movie meets one’s expectations (usually based upon whether they did what they sought out to do – did the comedy make you laugh? Did the horror movie make you scared?).
I started my college career as an electrical engineering major and the core classes within the engineering school used rigid bell curves. I mercifully switched majors after sophomore year, but my GPA had to lug around a lot of Cs that students in the college of arts & sciences didn’t experience. Maybe 10% got A’s, and a comparable number got F’s (which you NEVER saw in non-engineering classes).
“core classes within the engineering school used rigid bell curves.”In my core engineering classes that meant a 38 got you a C.
We had those for sure. All depended on the professor. Meanwhile one of my friends who was an early childhood education major had to sing “Happiness Runs in a Circular Motion” as one of his finals. Grrr.
I watched it at 2 AM and laughed my ass off. During the shitshow that is this year, something dopey hit the spot.
I want this movie to be something I giggle at through a mouthful of munchies. I think it will clear that bar. Looking forward to it.
Not sure if I’ll ever see this. The first one hit me in just the right context – I was graduating high school (like Bill and Ted!), the movie was filmed where I live in Phoenix, and the soundtrack was absolutely stellar late-80s pop rock.Bogus Journey had none of those advantages, and I couldn’t connect with it (except for William Sadler, who is a frickin’ treasure). The diminishing returns on the sequel, for me, were really severe.I wish Keanu and Alex the best – they seem to be good guys for actors – but there’s just nothing really compelling in it for me to make this more of a “catch it on TBS some night in a few years” film.
There was a really low bar for this movie to entertain and not disappoint me, and it successfully cleared it. Good job!
Bill and Ted Face the Music do to the princesses what Back to the Future did with Jennifer by leaving her on a porch for two films.
It is probably not very good, but still should have been a B- rating, just becasue Reeves is such a good dude and we are living through 2020, so any new content to watch automatically gets a bump.
This was an absolute delight, just a huge amount of fun, sweet and warmhearted and very, very funny and I can’t understand Katie’s response at all. I’m a huge fan of the first two and presumed I’d end up being disappointed, but the opposite occurred and I think I may even prefer it to Bogus Journey.
Agreed. I was…very worried! And had the thought “Wow, that CGI looks like crap, I wish they had just used a cheap set” every time they entered a scene.
I was actually delighted each time we saw other thems. And they made Scholl Carlin’s daughter 🙂 I was very happy with the sweetness they treated that with because that was the part I was most worried about. The musical figures were middling to fair in that we didn’t really get to see them interact with present day. But we got Death! And Kid Cudi threw out a station 🙂 See? I’m not a smiley type of person. Maybe it’s the pandemic stress, but this movie was passable *and* made me smile. Yay! Old Bill and Ted are rocking out!
As someone who watched the original in the theater my junior year of high school, it was exactly what I hoped for. I really enjoyed it. Dennis Caleb McCoy was the standout new joke, I think. I can understand if it’s a Gen X thing… I would say your enjoyment will depend on your enjoyment of the first one (or two). If you like Excellent Adventure, you will get a kick out of this.
Worth a $25 purchase, but not a $25 rental, so I’m glad they released it to own (or extended rental, with digital rights being what they are) immediately.
Don’t have that $25 to own option here in Canada, but my cable provider did rent it to me for 24 hours for $19.99 Canadian, which is about $14 these days.
Saw it this morning. Enjoyed it and if I was asked to watch it again, I would. It’s under 90 minutes which felt both right and made it very tight. Winter from a distance looks like he never aged and fits back into his role perfectly. Keanu tries to act back to the 80s/early 90s and does a pretty great job of it but it seems his persona brings an unneeded gravitas (super-stardom might be better) to the role which takes a bit from him being a dopey band playing man-child. I would say their daughters are better at being Bill and Ted then the actual Bill and Ted as they bring the youthful innocence of the previous movies. If I had one gripe it would be this movie needed more Death.
I have to disagree wholeheartedly with this review – which was clearly written by a B&T n00b. This film hits all the beats of the first two and is an excellent round-out to the trilogy. I laughed, reminisced, got goosebumps and even cried a bit. Loved every second! My score: B+/A-B&T fans will love this film. Watch!
Samara Weaving has one of those faces where every time I see her I stop and go: Is that Margot Robbie? Is that Emma Stone? Is that Gillian Jacobs?It’s like their 3 faces together are also her face?
Yeah, at times she gets a certain expression on her face that looks so much like Gillian Jacobs that I can’t believe they’re not sisters.
DUDE! I’ve been like a bodacious regular here for what seems like what? 15 years!Now everything I post is flagged Pending Approval.This is totally BOGUS!
Just watched it. Was excellent.
My girlfriend and I enjoyed this at a drive-in theater earlier tonight. It was light, breezy, not too self serious and had some chuckles. Not “Playing Battleship with Death” funny, but good enough for me. And I saw a crusty old dude wearing an eyepatch, eating nachos, when I went to the bathroom. So I basically got a double feature!
Just watched the whole trilogy back to back yesterday. All three films are equally silly and charming. This was a sequel that nobody asked for but still a nice ending to the saga of Bill & Ted. I felt like it needed to be seen in a theatre with other fans. It would’ve been a most joyous experience.
Keanu has risen to woke royalty and therefore even a shit movie will get him a C+ from AV Club.
because I’ve never seen a clear answer to this question–HOW did this get made? Did Keanu feel such a connection to this franchise that he decided to use some of his John Wick mojo to get this made? Did he want to hook up his friend Alex Winter (who seems to have a good career going on his own apart from this franchise)? Because admittedly I’m not a fan of these movies but I don’t really recall ANYONE asking for a 3rd Bill and Ted.
The short answer is yes. This movie has been in the works for decades at this point with both actors on board, but no one wanted to give the team the $$ cause Keanu had lost his shine post Matrix. Wick restores said shine and here we are. Also, you shut your lying whore’s mouth about no one wanting this!!!!!!!
I feel like I hit a nerve
I like the older movies better, and I’m in agreement with the review. Wish they did more with some of their ideas, particularly having fun with the historical musicians in the modern day. There’s sort of nothing to that storyline. A shame.
Total disagree on this. I had a blast. It was clever, it felt like Bill & Ted and I had a smile on my face throughout. A most triumphant finale.
Honestly, it’s kind of hard to judge this movie. Like, in any other year, I’d probably say it was middling, at best, but in the morass we’re in right now, it’s kind of exactly the movie I needed to watch.
Okay. I saw this today and it was pretty fun. Lots of folks from 30 years ago came back, including Missy, which was cool. Samara Weaving didn’t even really try to capture Bill, but Lundy-Paine went for Ted the whole way, and was awesome, even when she was in the background. Bill and Ted are older, and so their shtick isn’t full on like in the old days, but they’re still a couple of guileless, good hearted knuckleheads. It seemed like the movie had a few plotlines that weren’t working so they just abandoned them in the dirt as they kept moving on. ( If you know the history of these movies, you know that is in keeping with how they roll)Beck Bennett is in it, but does nothing funny, or really nothing at all. It teetered on using a fairly modern trope for belated sequels, and I was almost out, and then it reined in again, and I thought the conclusion, while making NO sense, was still good.You cannot think about this movie at all. Usually that would bug me, but the B&T Universe is all chaos all the time, and I was fine with it. There are absolutely no rules to adhere to in the movie. It was fun, and it was good hearted. I think you might need to have seen at least the first one to know what’s going on.
This site has developed a real problem with the Ebert scale: what did it set out to achieve and did it accomplish that? Everything is being graded on the scale of Citizen Kane and the Wire and if Citizen Kane came out today AV Club would give it a B for being slow. This movie, which surpasses any expectations of what a second Bill & Ted sequel made 29 years later would look like, is definitely not a C+. Complaining that Bill and Ted did not spend the last 29 years “strengthening their family bonds” and thus obviating the basis for another movie, is totally ridiculous. Why can’t it be a movie with no conflict where everybody just hugs for 90 minutes? Indeed.As far as the movie itself goes, Reeves is the more troubled of the two about their circumstances so it makes sense he would be less “up” but it still felt like he had some trouble tapping into the full Ted. It was too bad there wasn’t more daddy-daughter time, but that’s the way the plot crumbles, the quick switching between eras was a bit like “Stay Tuned”. Lundy-Paine was pretty captivating, interesting energy.
After watching this last weekend, I will say C+ is about right.
Also agree with the C+ rating. The script was really messy. It was only 80 minutes but still felt like it had a fair amount of filler. For example the entire B plot with the princesses didn’t add anything and probably should have been cut but the movie was already only 80 minutes long so they probably didn’t want to make it even shorter. It wasn’t even the same actresses, idk why those characters were even in the movie, they had nothing to do.And can we talk about how cheap it looked? I get that it was low budget but the first two movies had a certain amount of visual flair which is completely missing from this one. It’s all green-screen with bad CGI and a few scenes shot on location at generic settings like “rich guy house” or “dive bar”. I just really don’t get why this movie was made. This is ostensibly a passion project but Keanu just looked bored the entire time and probably gave the worst performance in the movie.
The movie was sweet an cute and worth my time if not my $30.
I don’t know if I’ve seen the first two since the 90s, but I grabbed the $35 bundle for all three and watched them this weekend and I got my money’s worth. Excellent Adventure’s many iconic scenes are still deservedly burned into my memory, Bogus Journey has a bunch of cool stuff I didn’t catch as a kid (in a Battle of the Bands against Primus? That’s stiff competition), and [all of Missy] makes a lot more sense now (Bill’s oedipal line!).I liked Face the Music, but don’t think it’s going to hold up as well as the other two, mostly for lack of anything as strong as Napoleon running loose or playing Twister against Death. Hendrix vs Mozart was almost there, but felt like it needed a little something more. The finale was cleverly arrived at, the girls were great, the range of not-white-dudes picked out by them was great, the murderbot was fine I guess, Kelly’s calls with her mom about the murderbot were great, and Death was doing Death things once again.
It’s a solid entry in the franchise, with humor very much in line with the last two, so if you liked those, you’ll like this.