Comedy is probably the hardest of all genres to get right, partly because it defies conventions of usual filmmaking in ways making it hard to predict what audiences will respond to. If a plot is weak and nonsensical, it usually undermines storytelling and the movie suffers. But in comedy, having thin, senseless plots can serve storytelling by making movies more entertaining. Sometimes nonsense and bad plots are part of the gag; other times, paper-thin plots allow people to be funny in absurd situations contrived to serve jokes.
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It can backfire miserably if filmmakers and casts fail to pull it off, but if they’re in sync they can turn it into hilarious success. Keanu is an example of the latter, as a film that succeeds despite lacking anything original or substantive in the plotting, supporting characters, themes, or tone.
With a $15 million budget, Keanu looks to make that investment back in its domestic bow this weekend. After a $560,000 Thursday night, most pundits are predicting an opening of $10-12 million. I had expected it could climb closer to $15-20 million as the low/high range (especially after seeing it for myself), since it stands out in the field of new releases, has had a solid social media marketing campaign, and R-rated comedies have performed pretty well lately when they offer lots of solid laughs. There’s also the popularity of the film’s stars, Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key of the Comedy Central series Key & Peel, to provide a boost as well.
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The positive reviews — it’s currently at 75% on Rotten Tomatoes — and the overwhelmingly positive viewer reactions to the trailers and marketing, plus the fact it’s good enough to enjoy plenty of positive audience word of mouth, should also all work in Keanu’s favor.
So despite Thursday’s returns and Friday’s expected $3-4 million in receipts, and despite most estimates now landing in the $10+ million range, I’m still going to guess it’ll have enough steam over the weekend to climb to the $15 million range. We’ll see if Friday evening winds up exceeding initial estimates and the first day tops $4 million by a decent margin, and if Saturday is better than expected, but frankly even a $10-12 million opening is more than enough for the film to claim victory.
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Why do I think audiences will respond as well to the film as they did to the trailers? Read on and find out!
Keanu is about two men trying to retrieve a stolen kitten, but they get mixed up with drug dealers who are selling a potent new drug while nearly indestructible hitmen are hot on their trail. Remove the “stolen kitten” part of that equation, and it sounds like a worn out ”drug dealers, new drug, bada** hitmen” plot full of the usual stereotypical characters and gunplay — which it pretty much is, except it’s a cliched action-crime movie from the 1980s or 1990s, except two ordinary guys wander into it and try to pretend they’re part of it so they can rescue their cat.
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It’s a silly comedy concept that rises or falls based entirely on how well the two main characters execute their performances, so Keanu is lucky to have two remarkably charismatic leads with tremendous chemistry. Peele and Key deliver non-stop belly laughs with jokes that hit far more often than they miss. This gets back to my initial point that the right talented people in the right premise can turn otherwise thin, recycled plots and contrived situations into comedy gold.
Part of the strong appeal for Peele and Key is that amid their humor are some resonant points about the humanity of some of the film’s otherwise bad people, and some biting satire addressing social attitudes toward young black men and how those stereotypes can cause people to quietly doubt their own humanity. Not that Keanu dives deep into social commentary and emotional analysis, but there’s some of it there if you care to pay attention, and it strengthens the film and makes certain comedy sequences all the more enjoyable. There is a good deal of emotional resonance in the relationship between the two male leads, too, and again their performances and the humor arising from their interactions — and how they react to the situation they’re caught in — makes the entire film worth the price of admission.
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It’s undeniable that many characters in the film, and several situations, don’t really work as well as they could or should. A shoehorned romance is frankly painful to watch whenever it tries to be too earnest, for example, and was better off when played for laughs as “not really a budding romantic angle.” One extended comedy setup has funny moments (including a star playing themselves when you don’t expect it) but feels a bit padded just to extend the film’s running time.
Also, the whole subplot (a term I use loosely here) about the super-tough “Dresden brothers” hitmen is pretty pointless, since they don’t exist in the film for any reason other than the initial “mistaken identities” situation that gets Peele and Key into the gang setup at the outset. That said, there’s a certain similarity to the Leonard Smalls character from Raising Arizona (he’s the hitman-type biker trying to track down the baby), and the fact Peele and Key play the hitmen adds at least some amusement to the proceedings at least on the front end.
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But those criticisms are beside the point, because this isn’t a movie concerned with making sense or scoring points for strong plotting and character develoment. It’s absurdist humor with two great comedy leads and an adorable kitten mewing in the most “the Internet loves kittens so the Internet needs to see this movie” manner possible, and even when some of the gags feel more like a short comedy sketch rewritten to be plugged into the middle of this movie, they work because the film keeps earning our good will with the Peele-Key pairing and that dang cat.
So ignore the plot, ignore the mostly cardboard supporting characters, ignore the fact none of it makes any sense — you’re going to laugh, and laugh a lot. Keanu has heart in the form of Peele and Key, and in form of a cute kitten worth all the trouble the two men endure to rescue him.
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As a first cinematic attempt for the comedy performers, this is a winning vehicle and I’m eager to see what they do next in feature films. My advice in that regard? Warner Bros, get them on board to play the PR reps for Booster Gold in the DCU, and make a Booster Gold movie — with Brad Pitt playing Booster — where Peele and Key as PR team are major supporting characters alongside Booster as he prepares to launch his own reality TV show. It’d be something like a superhero version of Entourage, basically, but in movie form. Peele and Key wouldn’t be small roles in this concept, they’d be costars in the ensemble . This idea is inspired by Sean Gerber’s (owner of Modern Myth Media) idea of a Booster Gold movie done as mockumentary, which is pretty brilliant already on its own. I can imagine the Peele-Key-Pitt ensemble concept working great for a mockumentary approach, too.
Be it mockumentary or Entourage-style, Peele and Key as PR experts alongside Pitt as Booster Gold is superhero-comedy gold, and if the DCU is going to have at least one franchise that leans more toward a lighter, humorous tone, Booster Gold is clearly the best choice. And Keanu definitely proves Peele and Key are ready for a bigger presence on the big screen.
Box office figures and tallies based on data via Box Office Mojo[1] , Rentrak[2], and TheNumbers[3].
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