Bill & Ted Face the Music
Orion Pictures | Release Date (Streaming): August 28, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
12
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
89
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerAug 27, 2020
With a story built around the need to bring everyone, all the oddballs and weirdos and lost friends and new friends together with peace, understanding, and a lack of judgement, maybe now is the time we really, truly need Bill & Ted. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJason BaileyAug 27, 2020
The conclusion of Bill & Ted Face the Music is pure corn, and by that point, they’ve earned it. It’s a film that’s somehow both offhand and meticulous, shaggy yet crisp, and the apparent joy of its creation is infectious. I laughed through a lot of it, and smiled through the rest. What a treat this movie is. Read full review
80
SlashfilmHoai-Tran BuiAug 28, 2020
Face the Music is just so overwhelmingly nice. It’s a cheesy, dopey, pure comedy about people who care a lot — maybe about trivial things, maybe about the wrong things — but boy do they care. And they just want to share their joy for the things they care about (namely rock ‘n’ roll) to the world. So sit back, don’t think too much, and party on, dudes. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 28, 2020
What people want from Bill & Ted Face the Music matters a lot less than what it actually is, a crazy, imperfect but deeply gratifying burst of optimism at the end of what has been — inarguably — a terrible summer. Its ramshackle earnestness, its certainty about nothing beyond the fact that we need to get our act together as human beings, is its great strength. Read full review
80
TheWrapSteve PondAug 27, 2020
It’s silly and occasionally a little slow, and it could use the kind of in-person audience that it won’t get in these pandemic days. But if you felt any affection for “Bill & Ted” in the past, you’ll feel it again here, because the movie rides on the same kind of goofy charm as its predecessors. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 27, 2020
The film is weightless and super-goofy — a blissed-out air balloon of nostalgia. It zips right along, it makes you smile and chortle, it’s a surprisingly sweet-spirited love story. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 27, 2020
[A] sweet, dumb, unnecessary, and absurdly charming movie. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzAug 27, 2020
Although the tale feels a bit slight – and yeah, I’m still aware we’re talking about a Bill & Ted movie – the affair is ultimately breezy, harmless fun. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoAug 27, 2020
It is a remarkably likable comedy about two good guys still trying to find their place in the world that’s anchored by genuinely sweet beliefs about the importance of friendship, honesty, and, most of all, music. Be excellent to each other, dudes. It still matters. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 27, 2020
Cheesy, yes, hit-and-miss, maybe, but the bits that work really do work. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittAug 27, 2020
While Face the Music is best when you don’t think about it too hard, it's also a movie that knows exactly what it is and doesn’t bother to have an insincere moment. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattAug 27, 2020
Mostly, the joy comes from watching Reeves and Winter on screen, two holy fools just doing their best to bring light and love and non-heinous riffs — and remind the bleary-eyed citizens of 2020, perhaps, of a simpler, sweeter world gone by. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnAug 27, 2020
Face the Music is a giant party of a movie, made all the more gratifying by the way it sits at odds with the divisive moment that greets its release. Things may be dire (in this movie and IRL) but Bill and Ted’s unbridled enthusiasm as their stumbles through daunting circumstances turn gleeful ignorance into a form of escapism. Read full review
72
PolygonKaren HanAug 28, 2020
Like its predecessors, Bill & Ted Face the Music is ultimately just friendly fluff, but Winter and Reeves are charming together, and the need for Bill and Ted to grow up a little helps give the film a backbone. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreAug 29, 2020
The most successful quality of the film is how close it keeps in spirit and haphazard style to the first two installments, and how it feels proudly unstuck in time. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensAug 27, 2020
Missteps and all, this movie’s heart remains in the right place. Its stars, who first met in the process of auditioning for Excellent Adventure, have been close friends ever since, and their shared sense of humor and love for the characters shines through even in the weaker moments. Read full review
70
UproxxMike RyanAug 27, 2020
Like in the other two movies, Bill and Ted are both just so nice that it’s impossible not to start rooting for them. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottAug 27, 2020
The new movie, directed by Dean Parisot, is an amiable, sloppy attempt to reassert the value of friendliness and crack a few jokes along the way. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeAug 27, 2020
Dean Parisot's Bill & Ted Face the Music is almost exactly as good as its two big-screen predecessors — make of that statement what you will — while cleaning up some, but not all, of the things that might make an old fan of those films cringe today. Read full review
70
ScreenCrushMatt SingerAug 27, 2020
Bill & Ted Face the Music breezes by for 95 minutes, cruising along with the same chill energy that Bill and Ted bring to every room they enter. It’s admittedly very slight, and the ending is way too abrupt. Still, Matheson and Solomon managed to make a movie about how life’s accumulating failures can turn people cynical without making Bill and Ted into cynics themselves. Read full review
70
IGNJim VejvodaAug 27, 2020
Bill & Ted Face the Music is a pleasant escape for the quarantine-stricken, a sweet and entertaining romp that defies expectations by largely recapturing what worked about the series so many years later. Read full review
69
Paste MagazineDom SinacolaAug 27, 2020
A sequel of rare sincerity, Bill & Ted Face the Music avoids feeling like a craven reviving of a hollowed-out IP or a cynical reboot, mostly because its ambition is the stuff of affection—for what the filmmakers are doing, made with sympathy for their audience and a genuine desire to explore these characters in a new context. Maybe that’s the despair talking. Or maybe it’s just the relief of for once confronting the past and finding that it’s aged considerably well. Read full review
67
ConsequenceMichael RoffmanAug 27, 2020
As expected, the real flexes come from the four principal stars. Winter seamlessly slides back into his flannel as Bill, wisely dialing things down to address the years. However, Reeves dials it down too much, coming off as nearly geriatric as he shuffles around as his buddy Ted. Read full review
65
CNNBrian LowryAug 27, 2020
Another adventure in nostalgia that nobody really needed and yet, if not excellent, manages to be good-hearted and reasonably fun. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchKatie WalshAug 28, 2020
Bill and Ted bouncing through time means the narratives of these films are merely loose assortments of kooky bits and cameos, and “Face the Music” doesn’t stray from that. While it doesn’t quite gel cohesively, in this casual kickback with a pair of old pals, it’s the dudes who remain excellent. Read full review
63
ObserverOliver JonesAug 27, 2020
They came in fleeting glances, befuddled smiles and odd-timed pauses that the iconic pair share with each other before the movie shuffles them from one frenzied and inconsequential story beat to the next. In such stolen moments, you sense the depth of a friendship so profoundly felt and so deeply comforting that you think to yourself, I would follow these guys anywhere. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineChuck BowenAug 27, 2020
The film suggests that Bill and Ted’s dreams of stardom, which have evolved into dreams of acceptance and expression, aren’t so stupid after all. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 22, 2020
This slapdash movie, with its big-hearted, puppyish positivity, might not save the world but it will surely lift the spirits. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 15, 2020
It’s amiably amusing, and Bill and Ted’s Peter Pannish inability to accept the ageing process is enjoyably surreal, with a weird tinge of not-entirely-intentional tragedy. Read full review
60
Total FilmKevin HarleyAug 29, 2020
A last, cheering hurrah from two dudes. Read full review
60
EmpireAl HornerAug 28, 2020
Reeves and Winter look like they’re having a blast getting the band back together in a fun but forgettable time-travelling comedy. Neither bodacious nor bogus. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 27, 2020
Bill & Ted Face the Music is sweet and hopeful and, of course, kind of stupid, but that’s a big part of the point. Read full review
60
Screen RantSandy SchaeferAug 27, 2020
Face the Music is clearly a passion project for the minds behind Bill & Ted, and it results in a sequel that coasts by on its goofy humor and heart. Read full review
58
Original-CinKim HughesAug 29, 2020
Even I found the film’s 90-minute running time draining, its story needlessly, maddeningly convoluted. I also lamented missed opportunities for in-jokes, sly sub-references, even guerilla fourth-wall demolition hijinks. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeAug 27, 2020
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. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 3, 2020
This isn’t a good movie in the conventional sense of the word but it may hit the sweet spot for those who have declared their affection for the slacker musicians originated by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter more than 30 years ago. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussAug 27, 2020
Any movie that celebrates the power of music, friendship, family and all of that scientific stuff Kid Cudi keeps jabbering about has got to be somewhat welcome at this particular point in the space-time continuum, right?...Oh, and stay past the closing credits for a little extra excellence. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonAug 27, 2020
This fitfully funny comedy — in which they must come up with the perfect song to stop reality from folding in on itself — offers little beyond nostalgia for an onscreen friendship that was once far more excellent. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 27, 2020
The result is just a bigger, louder, more special effects-laden extension of a franchise that skated on pretty thin ice the first two times around. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 27, 2020
A sentimental and cheerful affair that doesn’t amount to much more than an attempt to tap into their residual good vibes. Read full review
25
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiAug 27, 2020
This whole half-baked sequel is a forced exercise, willed into being by the so-called “Keanussance” — society’s renewed love affair with Reeves. He’s a nice guy and a decent actor, but he’s made a lame movie. It’ll let down even hardcore fans. Read full review
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