SXSW Film Review: Keanu
Comedy duo screens work in progress
By Michael Agresta, 3:00PM, Sun. Mar. 13, 2016
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are best known for escalating one-joke sketch comedy, typically riffing on race and black identity in America.
Fans of their top-notch Key & Peele work – the comic gold that goes viral, not the hit-or-miss deep cuts from the back half of each Comedy Central episode – will be happy to learn that the duo’s sensibility translates well to the feature-film format, where their absurdist instincts are hurried along by a well-oiled action-comedy plot.
The setup is Lebowski-an: Drug lords kidnap Keanu, the adopted kitten of a Hollywood stoner-slacker (Peele), and he and his uptight cousin (Key) must infiltrate the Los Angeles gang world to recover the kitty. The comedy is more Ace Ventura: Pet Detective-broad than Coen clever, but it works. The throughline is an extended fish-out-of-water gag of polite, middle-class black men putting on “street” affectations and living out a fantasy/nightmare of cartoonish American blackness. Method Man, a cornrowed Will Forte, and especially Anna Faris – playing herself – do memorable turns.
How do you review a work in progress? Judging by the welcoming reaction from the well-lubricated midnight SXSW audience, the film doesn’t have far to go. It should play and please widely.
A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.
Doug Freeman, Nov. 6, 2016
Alejandra Ramirez, Oct. 9, 2016
March 9, 2018
SXSW 2016, SXSW Film 2016, Keanu, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele