Movie Review: KEANU
Written by: FFT Webmaster | May 2nd, 2016
KEANU – 2 (out of 4 Stars)
There are good movies, there are bad movies and then there are just plain stupid movies. Keanu falls into the last category. Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of very funny (and financially successful) stupid movies but nevertheless they’re still a stupid movie. Many of Saturday Night Live’s (SNL) alumni, (Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler’s to name a few) fall into this category.
Keanu is from the writing team of Peele and Rubens and takes on the same appearance as the aforementioned. The main problem with this film is that it is a one gag comedy which would have been better off left as 4 minute skit then a feature-length film. While there were some amusing scenes and of course some cute cuddle kitten moments it was basically a one joke film that kept repeating itself and went nowhere.
OK so here’s the plot. A mass murder in Allentown between rival drug factions ends up with the only survivor being a kitten who escapes the clutches of the hitmen.
The kitten who’s on the run winds up in the possession of a depressed stoner Rell (Jordan Peele) who just broke up with his girlfriend giving him a new lease on life. Why is it always a stoner? Why can’t just for once be a mainline heroin crack addict? Peele couldn’t come up with a better name than Rell?
Rell’s best friend Clarence (Keegan-Michael Kay) who’s married with children, tries to console him about his break up and is thrilled he has a new pussy… cat in his life. Rell becomes an animal lover and does what all other animal lovers do, dress up their animals in stupid costumes and take photos of them. This collection is to become a non-distributed calendar.
After a few weeks of bonding with the kitten, the house is robbed and the cat goes missing. Another cat napping you say Batman? Why don’t we start our investigation with the drug dealer known as Hukla (Will Forte) who just so happens to live close by? Anytime you see a movie where Will Forte is featured, you know what type of movie you’re watching.
The dynamic duo runs around the ghetto hooking up with every bad guy with a stupid name imaginable like Cheddar (Method Man) and Bacon (Luis Guzman) in order to find the fallacious feline, while pretending to be bad guys themselves. This being a comedy, the writers put every stupid thing you could imagine into the script so there were no surprises or anticipation other than waiting for the kitten to make another appearance in a stupid costume which actually was the best and funniest part of the movie. Too bad they didn’t carry on with this gag. It was much better than the “Cheddar and Bacon” joke. And don’t get me started on the George Michael gag either. Just plain stupid.
So here’s my take on it. If you love cats or you’re an animal lover, go see this film but make sure you sneak in or don’t pay the price of admission. Use your cat like reflexes to figure out how to get in for free. If you’ve outgrown that part of your life, then skip it. You’d be better off taking a cat nap for a few hours than destroying a few brain cells on this film.
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