by Jordan Peele & Alex Rubens
New Line Cinema
If you didn’t think that I would be FIRST IN LINE for a movie with the premise of “Key and Peele brave gangsters to rescue a kitten” then you don’t know me at ALL.
(The kitten is not hurt and not in any real danger. Everyone who meets this cat wants to love it and protect it, and while he runs through two gunfights, no one, EVER, attempts to hurt the cat. EVER. Hell, a gang war breaks out over who gets to keep him.)
That’s basically the plot. The kitten escapes from a gang shoot out and appear at Rell’s (Peele) doorstep. Rell has just gone through a breakup, and this FUCKING ADORABLE KITTEN brings him out of his funk, and he names the kitten Keanu. One night, while out with his cousin Clarence (Key), his house is broken into and Keanu is kitten-napped, and Rell and Clarence embark on an epic adventure through the LA underworld to get the kitten back.
If you haven’t seen Key and Peele’s work (for example, Luther, Obama’s Anger Translator), they’re both biracial men who explore what it means to be a Black man in America, and how being biracial means that white people will never see them as anything but Black, and a lot of Black people sometimes don’t see them as Black enough. They also both have a talent for switching from one voice or dialect to another without missing a beat.
Basically, this is a lot of Key & Peele material put into a story. Their sketch show involved a lot of bits in between sketches of the two of them talking in a car- we have that. Playing different characters, with different voices and dialects? Yup. Interactions with police? Oh yes. Cameos that don’t seem that far off from “Hey, Anna Faris, can you come over to play? It’ll be fun!”
What makes this work, other than using material that they know works, is that it’s all hung on a SUPER SERIOUS gang warfare story (that hinges on a kitten). Everyone is balls to the wall on selling this. No one is winking at the camera, not even the kitten. The opening scene is a shoot-out between rival gangs, and it’s VERY SERIOUSLY shot and people are dying all over the place…but the focus of the camera is on a kitten. (According to the director, the seven cats had no problem running through the gunfights on cue-it was keeping the do-rags on their little heads that was the hardest thing.)
(We experimented with putting a little baseball helmet on Doof’s head, and she Did Not Like That At All.)
See?
Also the plot works because it seems like they came up with the plot, and then figured out which bits work in the plot, rather than stringing the plot from bit to bit. (I’m looking at you, Coneheads.)
We also have scenes like, “Clarence convinces a bunch of members of a gang that George Michael is totally cool” (“Is he Black?” “….he light-skinned…”) and Rell and Clarence trying to pretend like they’re total thugs and not middle class dudes who got beat up in high school. They also made it a point that Rell and Clarence are not “Saved” by a white person, and that all of the characters who have a significant effect on the plot are people of color. They made that choice actively.
It’s R-rated, and there’s quite a bit of death, gun-play, and drug use. But there’s no animal abuse of any kind, and while there are strippers (and boobs, but not, like, gratuitous boobs), there’s no violence against women because they’re women (One of the members of a gang is a woman, and she gets a flesh wound during a gunfight). Key and Peele are pretty good about their comedic targets (and you bet your ass they knew that actual threats to the kitten would destroy this movie).
Let me reiterate: the cat is never in actual danger. He projects a forcefield that makes everyone who meets him fall in love with him and want to protect him.
If you’re a fan of Key and Peele and kittens, this movie is for you. It’s exactly what it set out to be, and I will be buying it on DVD, because I appreciate wackadoo. This was wackadoo.
Keanu is in theaters now and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.
This is the second enthusiastic review I’ve seen of this movie. I’ll probably wait for the DVD release though. (Unless CA:CW is sold out at both cheap showings tomorrow morning. I hate wasting a bus trip.)
Something to tide me over until Suicide Squad comes out. 🙂 NINA was…disappointing.
I cannot wait to see this!!! I’ve been excited since I saw the first movie trailer-so glad you gave it an A. I also tried to put a little cap on my cat, didn’t go over well at all.
I saw Keanu yesterday and enjoyed it greatly. Many laughs. I walked out of the theatre saying, “Let’s go get a kitten!” but then remembered my two older cats would eat a kitten alive. My cats have, on occasion, allowed me to put a Santa hat on them during the holidays.
My husband talked me into seeing this. I haven’t laughed so hard in a movie in ages. The kitten in a do-rag just KILLED me.
Even the poster is funny. Kitten, please.
The first time I saw the trailer I thought it was a joke. I am looking forward to being able to see it!!!!
I LOVE Key and Peele so much. Can’t wait to see this — thanks for the review!
I did not know what this movie was about; thank you for the review.
I have a hard time seeing violence in any form and so I am pretty strategic in what I watch (or close my eyes during the scary parts 🙂 . I have felt bothered a few times in reviews where there is graphic or marked violence/gore against humans in the film and that is seemingly more okay or less troublesome than depicted violence against animals. I know this is an incendiary statement. I am in *no way* saying I condone or want to see animals get hurt. I do not. I am a vegetarian and as far as I am concerned, they go their way and I go mine. I guess I feel saddened sometimes by what feels to me like disregard or disrespect for life in general (in my example, humans) in entertainment. Maybe we have seen it so much it has desensitized us to what can be very brutal. It feels to me sometimes like disposability.
“a lot of Black people sometimes don’t see them as Black enough”. I think I nearly got heat stroke from this hot take. I can tell you as a black person this a not opinion I have, or have ever seen expressed regarding these two. That you have decided that the opinions of some ill informed black people now become “a lot” is stuff and non-sense of the highest order and just drop it in the middle of this review. Really? Please cease an settle with the specious statements about something with which you have no purview. Ruined my afternoon.
@Esha:
RedHeadedGirl isn’t in a place where she can respond, but I wanted to explain. That paragraph was based on interviews given by Key and Peele themselves, and their take on audience reaction to their work. That wasn’t her analysis; it was reporting their analysis, and I am sorry that wasn’t more clear.
Thank you for responding. I know they have discussed being bi-racial at length. I don’t believe the paragraph in this review was a direct quote though, so it’s still her analysis of their analysis and that’s crystal.
I think I need this in my life, don’t know if it’ll open in my country though 🙁
“No one is winking at the camera, not even the kitten.”
I love it.
Oh lord, I’m so excited to see this now. Really you could put them in an infomercial for old butter and I watch it twenty times, but this looks thoroughly good 😀
@Esha, in almost every interview I’ve seen with Key &/or Peele one or the other talks about the tension between being seen as too Black by Whites, and not Black enough by Blacks. As an alumna of the same Catholic schools in and around Detroit that KMK attended, I can attest to living with that same tension every day. Maybe it’s a Detroit thing and therefore less pervasive than I think (or apparently, he thinks). That tension is a major source of material for Key and Peele. Check out their recent interview with Terry Gross on NPRs Fresh Air where they expound on that very subject.