Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

Content Caution

MediumKids
LightTeens
LightAdults
Bill and Ted stand side by side.

Credits

In Theaters

Cast

Home Release Date

Director

Distributor

Reviewer

Adam R. Holz

Movie Review

Once upon a time—OK, 1989, 1991, whatever—Bill Preston and Ted Logan seemed poised for global superstardom with their band Wyld Stallyns. In fact, the futuristic Great Leader whose technology had provided their first crazy chronological ride all those decades ago had prophesied that these two unlikely heroes would unite the world in peace and harmony through the most excellent song ever written.

Bill and Ted have tried to live up to that lofty hope. For more than 20 years they’ve tried to pen that song. Perhaps the title of their latest “hit”—debuted to confused looks at their little brother’s exceedingly strange wedding to their former stepmother—hints at where things went weird: “That Which Binds Us Through Time: The Chemical, Physical and Biological Nature of Love—An Exploration of the Meaning of Meaning, Part One.”

Too ambitious? Too Dickensian? Too arty? Yeah. Probably. I mean, not everyone really gets the theremin. Or bagpipes. Or steel drums. Or … growling.   

Ted suggests maybe it’s time to pack it in. To give up on the dream. After all, their band—featuring none other than Death himself on bass—packed it in years ago.

Bill can’t believe it. Music is their life—and the life of their two very Bill-and-Ted-like young-adult daughters, Thea and Billie, who might even love music more than they do.

But maybe Ted’s right. Maybe it’s time to call i—

Hold up: What’s that giant space egg doing in the driveway? Where did that come from? And who’s that very woman-from-the-future-looking woman getting out of it?

Turns out her name is Kelly, the daughter of their chronological mentor from all those years before, Rufus. And she’s got a message for them: Bill and Ted still need to write that prophesied song to unite the world. “Without it, reality will collapse, and time and space will cease to exist.”

Bogus!

Positive Elements

Time travel, sci-fi spirituality and plenty of nods to wailing guitar collide like manic electrons in this madcap sequel, three decades in the making. But beneath layers of silliness, there’s a pretty sweet story here.

Bill and Ted remain best friends. They love their wives, Joanna and Elizabeth, respectively, and the two couples get along so well together that they’re practically one big family unit. (When they go to couples’ therapy, for instance, they go together as two couples.) And their love and affection for their innocent, zany, music-loving daughters is pretty infectious too.

Bill and Ted are petrified that if they haven’t been able to write the prophesied song that will unite the world in 25 years, they’re certainly not going to be able to make it happen in a few hours.

Then again, they can still time travel. So Ted hatches the ingenious, if lazy, idea that they can travel into the future, find their future selves, and just steal the song from them. It’s a mind-binding (and comedic) plot twist that introduces them to increasingly older versions of themselves, who have some lessons to teach along the way. And if these guys aren’t always the brightest lights, they’re nothing if not determined.

Their daughters Thea and Billie, meanwhile, suspect that their dads may not be OK, and they commence their own journey backward in time to assemble a band made up of the greatest musicians throughout history in a sweet attempt to help their dads.

Oddly enough, their heroism and determination lands almost all of them in hell, which brings us to our next section.

Spiritual Elements

Let’s dispense immediately with any notion that this manic sequel is even attempting to posit a cohesive spiritual worldview. It isn’t. That said, there’s actually quite a lot of pseudo-spiritual stuff here—in a sort of latter-day, Monty Python-esque way.

As mentioned, things don’t go well, landing Bill, Ted and a whole bunch of other characters in a hot place. Namely, hell (which is mentioned by name, by the way). Good news, though: Death—as in the Grim Reaper personified—used to be the guys’ bass player until Wyld Stallyns broke up. He’s not very happy with Bill and Ted, but even Death can’t resist the allure of one more shot at fame by putting the band back together.

Though Death is a pretty affable, pasty guy, his domain is full of fire, manual labor and some pretty spooky-looking winged demons flying around. Two other surprisingly helpful demons give the guys directions in hell when they’re a bit lost, too.

The main storyline pivots around a prophecy delivered years earlier that Bill and Ted’s efforts would somehow snuff out a space-time apocalypse—which is most definitely on the way. Famous landmarks (the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramids, etc.) are being physically displaced, and famous historical figures (Jesus, the Buddha, Babe Ruth, George Washington, rapper Kid Cudi, among others) are trading places haphazardly in history’s chronological narrative.

The only thing that can restore the cosmic order, the guys are told, is their song. For some undefined reason, music is depicted as the force that can stave off the end of the world, perhaps because it engenders feelings of unity and love when shared.

Sexual Content

Bill & Ted Face the Music begins with a truly bizarre wedding. In it, Ted’s younger brother, Deacon, is marrying their former stepmother, Missy. Turns out Missy left Ted and Deacon’s dad, and now she’s marrying the much younger man. There’s one passionate and suggestive kiss, as well as jokes about how Deacon is now his own father-in-law, his father’s father, etc.

That slightly creepy scene would seem to portend more nastiness. But in pleasant turn, the movie doesn’t go there at all. Bill and Ted each share nice, sweet kisses with their respective wives. Billie (Ted’s daughter) wears a formfitting top (though she’s really not sexualized).

One future glimpse of Bill and Ted finds them in prison; they’re shown shirtless and hysterically muscled from having worked out during their incarceration. A montage of very fast-moving scenes in the credits shows a guy in a bathtub (covered with bubbles) and some women dancing in midriff-baring outfits.

Violent Content

A vaguely Terminator-like robot (with the ridiculous name Dennis Caleb McCoy) has a pretty significant conscience attack after vaporizing a whole bunch of characters with a laser beam.

Characters tumble roughly into hell, landing with jarring thuds. Bill and Ted have a tense encounter, including a bit of a scuffle, with older versions of themselves. Multiple people get knocked about rocketing through space-time wormholes in a telephone booth. Bill and Ted jump/fall out of a window with mop buckets on their heads, plunging into a shrubbery a story below. A group of prison inmates swarms Dennis and takes him down in a wild scrum.

Increasingly apocalyptic scenes picture monuments crashing destructively into places they shouldn’t be as the end of the cosmos (should Bill and Ted fail) draws nigh.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear three misuses of God’s name, two uses of “h—,” one of “a–” and one of the British profanity “bloody.” “D–k” is heard twice (both times as a name-calling putdown), and “d–kweed” once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

People drink champagne in a couple celebratory scenes, including one at a wedding.

Bill and Ted visit future versions of themselves who, they discover, aren’t doing very well. Ted, in particular, has developed a drinking problem. Older versions of Ted are shown drinking (from a flask, straight from a bottle of vodka), and various comments are made about how this area of his life has spun out of control. That drinking problem is emphasized (comedically) in a “Fat Thor”-like scene in which he removes his shirt to reveal a huge beer gut.

Other Negative Elements

The Great Leader—the futuristic woman manipulating various chronological events—loses faith in Bill and Ted and proposes a rather drastic alternative solution to try to save the universe.

A written review headline for a Wyld Stallyns album reads, “More Manure From Stallyns.”

Conclusion

“Sometimes things don’t make sense until the end of the story,” we hear at one point in Bill & Ted Face the Music. It’s a gentle message in a story that mostly doesn’t make much sense.

Then again, no one expects it to. This movie is a love letter of sorts to fans of the 1989 cult classic, which ushered phrases like “Duuuuddeeee,” “Excellent!” and, of course, “Bogus!” into the 1980s Jargon Hall of Fame.

Perhaps the biggest surprise here is how relatively innocent it all feels. Yes, a handful of profanities creep in. And speaking of creepy, the opening wedding scene is pretty bizarre. But from there, things alternate between silly and sweet, with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reprising their goofily one-dimensional roles with zany zest.

The film’s spiritual worldview—if it even deserves a phrase that lofty to describe it—is nothing more than a plot platform for a time-traveling romp that doesn’t make any sense. Some viewers won’t appreciate seeing Jesus getting zapped out of the Last Supper and into a band where He’s playing a cowbell. But the movie has no serious spiritual pretenses or agenda (though a family could certainly use scenes set in hell as a springboard to a thoughtful conversation about the afterlife).

Mostly, this flick seems intent on delivering a laugh-out-loud homage to the original franchise. And compared to many, if not most, PG-13 comedies that push the boundaries in terms of sexual innuendo and harsh language, Bill & Ted Face the Music feels pretty refreshingly inoffensive by comparison.

The Plugged In Show logo
Elevate family time with our parent-friendly entertainment reviews! The Plugged In Podcast has in-depth conversations on the latest movies, video games, social media and more.
adam-holz
Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.