92 min | PG-13 | August 28, 2020 | Orion Pictures
Bill and Ted are middle-aged and the song that unites the universe still doesn’t exist. Now reality is collapsing and they have a few hours to write it. Naturally, they decide to steal it from their future selves instead.
Bill S. Preston and Ted Logan are middle-aged. The prophecy said they would write a song that unites the world. They have not done it. A messenger from the future tells them they have a few hours before reality unravels. Their solution is to travel forward and steal the finished song from their future selves. The film is really about the gap between the people we promised to become and the people we actually are.
Keanu Reeves plays Ted Logan as a man worn down by an expectation he never asked for. Alex Winter plays Bill S. Preston with the same dopey optimism, now aged into denial. The two slip back into the rhythm of the originals without straining for it. Samara Weaving plays Thea Preston and Jack Haven plays Billie Logan as the daughters, and they mirror their fathers’ phrasing and stoner cadence with precision. William Sadler returns as Death and steals every scene he occupies, equal parts vain and petty. Anthony Carrigan plays the killer robot Dennis Caleb McCoy with anxious sincerity that turns a throwaway gag into the funniest thing in the film.
Dean Parisot directs the time travel with a light touch and keeps the effects from upstaging the actors. The script by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, the original writers, builds each future visit around a different flavor of failure. The production design dresses the future Bills and Teds in escalating prison muscle and Vegas excess, so each jump forward hands Reeves and Winter a new costume and a new posture to play. The film crosscuts between the fathers chasing the song and the daughters assembling a band from history. That parallel editing keeps the thin premise moving and hides how little actually happens in any single scene.
This is a sequel that knows exactly what it is. It does not reinvent the characters or update their worldview for a harsher decade. It keeps the be-excellent-to-each-other sincerity intact and bets that the audience still wants it. The plot machinery is flimsy and the resolution arrives too easily. What survives is the chemistry between two actors who clearly enjoy playing these idiots, and a closing idea about who actually writes the song that is more generous than the franchise needs to be.