COMEDY; 1hr 31min
STARRING: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter
Hell no! Reeves (left) and Winter
Thirty-one years since their Excellent Adventure and 29 since the subsequent Bogus Journey, time-travelling knuckleheads and Wyld Stallyns rockers Bill Preston and Ted Logan (Winter and Reeves, totally at home) are still in the business of uniting a fracturing planet — or trying to — with a killer song. The project of “[saving] reality as we know it” hasn’t been smooth sailing, to put it mildly: although the BFFs are married to their literal Princesses, Joanna and Elizabeth (Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes), and the proud fathers of chips-off-their-dads teenage daughters Thea and Billie (Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine), perennial boys will be boys, right down to their air guitar–thrashing fingertips. Small wonder the two couples are in counselling (together), an always touchy process that isn’t helped any after B & T take phone-booth spins into the future, only to encounter even more washed-up versions of their current selves.
Galaxy Quest director Dean Parisot brings it on with a vengeance when wives and daughters get in on the physics-defying act, ping-ponging through centuries with what-the-hell abandon while the clock ticks to a global meltdown. Along the way, a quick-thinking Thea and Billie muster up a backing band that includes Jimi Hendrix (DazMann Still), Louis Armstrong (Jeremiah Craft) and Mozart (Daniel Dorr). Whoa! Other highlights involve a needy killer robot (Anthony Carrigan as Dennis), a side trip to Hell, where Death (William Sadler) puts in another campy appearance, and a Mr Cool Kid Cudi as himself. There’s not one lifeless minute as everybody goes for broke in a happy fusion of spacey sci-fi, can-do spirit and some supremo doofus dude moves. It’s a timely balm for a troubled world, and it’s all perfectly silly.
