Keanu
The comic duo Key & Peele take to the big screen in a one-joke premise involving a kitten
called
Keanu.
Keanu
is
going to be the sweetest kitten you see at the movies all year. In
fact, Keanu
is so damned cute that he starts a turf war between some pretty badass
drug
lords in the L.A. region. However, while various mofos are blasting
each other
off the planet, the little kitty finds itself at the door of Rell
(Jordan Peele),
just when he needs a little ball of fur and big eyes the most. He’s
just broken
up with his girlfriend and is a total mess and the unexpected visitor
raises
his spirits no end. Soon, the film buff-cum-photographer is posing his
new
friend in a series of tableaux mimicking scenes from famous movies,
from The Shining to The
Silence of the Lambs. Oh, they have so much fun together. But
no sooner is Rell’s life getting back on track than his house is
burgled and
the kitten – whom he dubbed ‘Keanu’ – is gone. Determined to reclaim
the new
love of his life, Rell teams up with his cousin and best friend
Clarence
(Keegan-Michael Key), and together they masquerade as some heavy
mothers, the
better to infiltrate the underworld where they suspect Keanu has been
taken…
Jordan
Peele
and Keegan-Michael Key are a comic double-act whose black-in-L.A.
shtick will
no doubt appeal to a very specific urban demographic. Here, as the
dopey,
middle-class cousins they are a far cry from the hard-man dynamic to
which
their characters aspire. For starters, Clarence has a very uncool
fixation on
George Michael, while Rell is the ultimate film nerd with a particular
obsession for Mario Van Peebles' New Jack
City. But there’s an endearing shorthand between the guys, so
that when
Clarence asks Rell on the phone how he is, the latter replies: “I look
like Apollo
Creed!” Clarence: “Which Rocky?”
Rell: “The one where he dies.”
Key,
the son
of a black father and white mother, comes across as a sort of preppy,
shorter
version of Dwayne Johnson, armed with a high-pitched squeal. However,
the
banter between the two stars, while initially amusing, pretty soon
wears thin.
Ultimately, Keanu is a one-joke
premise
shoehorned into a familiar gangsta template with gobs of the usual
violence,
drug-taking and bad language. In better, sharper material, Jordan Peele
could
make a rather sweet leading man, with Key as sufficient back-up, but
this is
not the film to win the duo any new fans. There’s a memorable cameo
from Anna
Faris as a frenzied version of herself, but she gets killed off too
soon. By my
count, she’s the second star to die on screen this year (in the wake of
the
late Kate Moss in Absolutely Fabulous:
The Movie). Following the untimely death of Bill Murray as
Bill Murray in Zombieland, this
could become a
celebrity trend.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key,
Will Forte, Method Man, Tiffany Hadish, Luis Guzmán, Nia Long, Darrell
Britt-Gibson, Jason Mitchell, Jamar Malachi Neighbors, Anna Faris,
Keanu Reeves
(voice only).
Dir Peter Atencio, Pro
Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key, Peter Principato, Paul Young
and Joel Zadak, Screenplay Jordan
Peele and Alex Rubens, Ph Jas
Shelton,
Pro Des Aaron Osborne, Ed Nicholas Monsour, Music
Steve Jablonsky and Nathan
Whitehead, Costumes Abby O’Sullivan.
New Line Cinema/RatPac-Dune Entertainment/Monkeypaw Productions/Principato-Young Entertainment-Warner Brothers.
99 mins. USA. 2016. Rel: 15 July 2016. Cert. 15.