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'Keanu': Puss & Galoots
By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
07:36PM / Thursday, May 05, 2016
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More misses than hits in director Peter Atencio's "Keanu," a rambunctious action-comedy starring Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, suggest that the effort might best be enjoyed by fans of the duo's Comedy Central sketch series, "Key & Peele." Oddly, though, while unaware of the pair's cable TV fame and thus essentially a representative of the Great Unwashed, this admittedly easy chortler laughed much more than the supposed target audience with whom I viewed the movie.

While it behooves to academically note that the essence of comedy hasn't changed since Oog tripped Grouk as he exited his cave, the art of making folks chuckle, titter and hopefully guffaw often reflects the mood and emotion of the time. In that light, and a bit painful to put forward, there is an anger and nihilism in this rather fringy farce that doesn't seem, in the final analysis, to be all in good fun.

Oh sure, the story ultimately wraps itself in a traditional moral message, but probably because it doesn't know where else to bring its enmity and despair. Read between the lines of the twisty-turny, often awkward screenplay and you could make the case that "Keanu" is secretly a social critique smuggled into theaters as a comedy.

It possesses an uncomfortable duality, an oil-and-water mixture of drollery and murderous violence without the winking sarcasm required to make it edgy in an avant-garde sort of way. The immiscible blend has you aghast at one moment, and then wondering whether to laugh at the next. Granted, there are some funny observations and deductions. But the element that's missing, the catalyst that could make it work, is wit.

While hesitant to mention "Keanu" in the same paragraph, the great "Arsenic and Old Lace," by virtue of its comic suavity, was able to mine humor from a pair of silly old biddies who were cold-blooded executioners. But that was well written fantasy, whereas gangs and terrorists are to modern civilization what the Norsemen were to the folks of yore. Here, with a plot configuration that weaves its supposedly funny wild goose chase through the realities of our inner-city woes, it plays too close to home.

Actually, it's a domestic kitten chase, a pursuit that evolves from the curative effects the title feline has on Jordan Peele's Rell after his girlfriend gives him the gate. When little Keanu wanders into his house, it seems heaven-sent. The cloud of depression lifts and life is again worth living.

His cousin and best friend, Clarence, played by Keegan-Michael Key, is ecstatic. Thus it only follows that, when Keanu is abducted by gruesome thugs whose original mission was to collect a debt from the weed dealer next-door, the kitty must be recovered. It becomes a matter of life and death, literally.

Be apprised that, before tiptoeing into Rell's dysfunction, Keanu was Iglesias, the furry pride and joy of the major drug honcho, King Diaz, killed by the rival Allentown Boys. Now, back again in the seamy underworld of illegal substance peddling, Iglesias, aka Keanu, has been named New Jack by Cheddar (Method Man), the treacherous head of the notorious 17th St. Blips. They hole up in a strip club downtown. Hence it only figures that if Rell wants his little mouser back, he and Clarence will just have to infiltrate the gang.

The humor is supposed to emanate from the idea that these two middle class guys, one a photographer, the other a corporate team builder, are soon assuming the mores and folkways of gangsta life, if you can dig. But while obviously absurd, this isn't really an apt subject for parody. Finding the humor in this pariah while parenthetically glorifying it in the process, is akin to making fun of cancer.

What is funny is that actual gang members with a broadminded bent just may find the satire in "Keanu" amusing in a self-effacing sort of way, and even regard it a left-handed, albeit fatalistic, approbation of their antisocial lifestyle. Considered from a marketing point of view, I like to think that's an awful thin swath. Otherwise, peaceable folk with a sociological interest in street culture might simply take pleasure in the charade the principal interlopers attempt to perpetrate. No bit of jargon or swagger is left unturned.

Insofar as Peele and Key's big screen debut, the two are competent enough inheritors of the tradition honed by Laurel and Hardy and then Abbott and Costello. Gosh knows those intrepid bumblers masqueraded in their share of iniquitous dens. But while these two exude decent chemistry, they ostensibly rely on the fact that a good portion of their young, multiplex audience is only there for the hip sights and sounds. Serving as little more than backdrop to their nonstop texting, "Keanu" is hardly the cat's meow.

"Keanu," rated R, is a Warner Bros. release directed by Peter Atencio and stars Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele and Tiffany Haddish. Running time: 100 minutes.
 

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