Peter Atencio
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Connections, in both directions
At key points, the film seems to actually be referencing another Keanu in the Keanu Reeves film, “ John Wick .”
It ends up a mix of fish-out-of-water, code-switching comedy and lightly satirical take-off on films like New Jack City and John Wick, with the violence sitting uneasily alongside the jokes.
It’s either sheer coincidence or a really great in-joke that the movie plays like a riff on the Keanu Reeves action film, “ John Wick ,” but although “Keanu” is very much a comedy, the violence is played completely straight.
Good news for the “Key and Peele” stars, their delightfully bonkers riff on “John Wick” passes with flying colors.
Key and Peele have cat-apulted to the big screen with the wonderful “Keanu,” an R-rated movie that’s sort of like blending an episode of “Lassie” with “John Wick.”
The feline's name even seems like a wink at a film with some uncanny parallels to this one: Keanu Reeves' electric murdered-pet revenge flick John Wick.
Rell (Jordan Peele) fills his empty days after a breakup with excessive weed smoking and morose lounging on his couch, surrounded by posters of films like “Heat” and “ New Jack City .”
Audiences familiar with Key and Peele’s pop-cultural savvy will be unsurprised by the various on-screen allusions to crime thrillers like “Heat” and “New Jack City,” plus throwaway comic references to “Fargo,” “The Shining,” “Crimson Tide” and “Point Break” (all of which figure into one of the movie’s better visual gags).
Keanu wears its influences on its sleeve to an almost rebellious degree: Rell’s apartment is littered with New Jack City and Heat posters, and one of his earliest activities with Keanu sees him assembling a calendar of the kitten re-enacting scenes from famous crime/action films.
If you dropped a cute kitten into Michael Mann's "Heat," would Robert De Niro have gone all soft and goo-goo eyed?
It doesn’t help that director Peter Atencio—who helmed virtually every “Key & Peele” sketch—strives to make that second climax a comic Scarface homage, when it more closely resembles a distant cousin to the expert Michael Bay spoof that closes out Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz.
Could Al Pacino's rage in "Scarface" have been melted away by a feline "little friend"?
That was the dilemma Edgar Wright faced when making 2007’s Hot Fuzz, a riff of the over-the-top theatrics of buddy cop movies that was itself an over-the-top buddy cop movie.
It doesn’t help that director Peter Atencio—who helmed virtually every “Key & Peele” sketch—strives to make that second climax a comic Scarface homage, when it more closely resembles a distant cousin to the expert Michael Bay spoof that closes out Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz.
That's when "Keanu" becomes an amusing send-up of deep-cover gangster-thrillers (it makes several shoutouts to "New Jack City," and sometimes feels like the sister film to Edgar Wright's "Point Break"-inspired genre parody "Hot Fuzz"), sometimes shocking in its dark comedy, Key and Peele painting a veneer of inspired silliness over the bleak realities of street-thug crime.
The comedy eagerly wants to both ape and admire another narrowish genre – the dumb and fun urban crime thriller, familiar to fans of New Jack City, Training Day and True Romance.
The movies that really inspired this are “True Romance,” “Thelma & Louise,” “New Jack City,” “Raising Arizona,” some “¡Three Amigos!”
"Keanu" takes most of its cues from buddy action-comedies like "Bad Boys," "Pineapple Express" and even Method Man's own "How High," and never tries to reinvent that wheel.
It’s not up to the lowdown level of “Pineapple Express,” which was kind of the idea.
Keanu’s story structure is episodic, in a similar vein to Pineapple Express and Superbad.
Tinged with the same playful upending of racial stereotypes found in “Key & Peele” along with the zaniest use of shootouts and explosions this side of “Pineapple Express,” the trailer for “Keanu” not only epitomizes the movie’s appeal; it highlights the parts that work.
The movies that really inspired this are “True Romance,” “Thelma & Louise,” “New Jack City,” “Raising Arizona,” some “¡Three Amigos!”
Like the baby in Raising Arizona, Keanu the kitten stirs up everyone's emotions without having any of its own.
Today’s comedy film exists in a different era, one where every action blockbuster has jokes, comedy directors like the Russo Brothers are helming Marvel movies, and Jordan Peele chose to do Get Out instead of another mainstream comedy movie like Keanu and was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination.
Game Night is a morbid, deranged take on growing up and finding our weekly spark, if not an absolutely insane riff off Clue meets Keanu (in some weird mainstream comedy universe).
The film's second central joke hinges on a form of culture clash, familiar from comedies ranging from The Hangover to Horrible Bosses to Let's Be Cops.