The most important aspect of any comedy is whether or not it is funny. Like any movie in a specific and emotion-based genre (horror, romance, suspense, etc.) the main concern on an audience’s mind will be a simple one: does this film deliver the goods? A movie that markets itself as “bone-chilling” but winds up being laughable is a failure. So if a movie is marketed as a comedy, it has to deliver laughs. That’s the easily summed up majority of what matters.
In the spirit of that simplicity, let me state simply: Keanu is uproariously funny — so much so that you might actually miss lines of dialogue due to the volume of laughter in the theater. This fever pitch of hilarity is sustained uniformly throughout the entire film despite many aspects of the plot dragging and dipping, making the movie feel slightly longer than it actually is.
There are three reasons that Keanu works in spite of its plot deficiencies and redundancies, and they are, in no particular order, Keegan Michael-Key, Jordan Peele, and the titular kitten, Keanu. As the co-leads of the film and the gimmicky hook/MacGuffin respectively, these three manage to carry the audience through the otherwise detrimental lulls in the narrative drive.
That there should be such lulls is a bit of a shock, considering how simple the plot is and yet how rich it is in comedic potential. Rell (Jordan Peele) is a lazy stoner with no ambitions who is in distress following the dissolution of his most recent relationship. His cousin, Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) is on his way to comfort his nearly inconsolable comrade when Keanu arrives at Rell’s doorstep. As with everyone in the film, it doesn’t take long for both men to fall in love with what is perhaps the most adorable, charismatic, acrobatic cat to have ever been seen on film. Trouble arrives, however, when a local gang breaks into Rell’s apartment and steals Keanu. Despite being accurately pegged as “nerds” by their weed-dealing neighbor, Rell and Clarence decide to infiltrate the gang and get back Rell’s beloved pet.
So begins a comedy of errors and mistaken identities that is at once uneven in narrative and unmatched in hilarity. Key and Peele, who made comedic hay out of racial expectations and stereotypes in their self-named Comedy Central show, are experts at mining uncomfortable and delirious humor out of any situation. Be it Rell and Clarence’s fish-out-of-water introduction to the gang in a gritty strip club or their bumbling attempts to appear to be cold-blooded contract killers, the two actors find new beats and surprisingly tics to mine for maximum impact. The ways in which their characters respond to each situation, seeing how they embrace certain aspects of their assassin personas, is an unhinged blast. Seeing as the movie falters when it tries to stretch out the plot to feature length, having these performances and characters is essential to keeping the film buoyed.
The main issue in terms of narrative is the way that the movie struggles to build a more meaningful story around the otherwise absurd plot. It would be enough to watch these two very straight-laced characters both struggle with and embrace their hard-hitting alter egos, but the film has trouble finding reasons to keep these men stuck in this situation. Deals are struck and renegotiated, a drug deal takes far too long, and what should be a climactic turn is instead merely a prelude to the true climax, which itself then has a lighter final climax. The narrative machine grinds on, but the story engine behind it stutters a lot in the course of it. Luckily, our two leads and the various side characters involved – with special mention going to Tiffany Haddish, Method Man, and Darrell Britt-Gibson – hold our interest even as the story fails to.
And of course there is Keanu himself. It cannot be understated how freaking cute this cat is, and how much that cuteness drives the plot and makes everything all the more funny. Director Peter Atencio shoots the whole film with a certain kind of verve that keeps things from getting too stale, but his work with Keanu is especially great. Every scene of the cat running through situations of utter mayhem is a riot, and every time the film cuts to the cat to hear its diminutive meow is well-placed. The bulk of the plot is predicated on people being unable or unwilling to let go of this animal, and you buy it.
Keanu is a lightweight film with heavyweight laughs, a completely satisfying comedy experience from start to finish. An old show business adage says “never let them see you sweat.” It’s a testament to the actors and their comedic chops that even though we can feel the movie straining, we never see them break a sweat to do the heavy lifting requires to keep it all together.
Keanu opens on Friday, April 29th.