Keanu (2016) * *

Directed by:  Peter Atencio

Starring:  Keegan Michael-Key, Jordan Peele, Method Man, Nia Long, Will Forte, Luis Guzman, Tiffany Haddish, Anna Faris

I never watched Key & Peele, so I went into Keanu cold without any predispositions or expectations.    Keanu has an adorable kitten, is sporadically funny, and does not make me want to binge watch past Key & Peele episodes.     Some of the jokes are initially funny, but then are repeated until they are beaten into the ground.      I suppose the idea of a black man listening to George Michael on his iPod is meant to be funny.     Or the idea of a kitten dressed in street gear.    Or watching Anna Faris whacked out of her mind on drugs.    Or all of this violence over a kitten, no matter how cute he is.    Most of the gags miss.   

The Keanu of the title is not Keanu Reeves, but a kitten who escapes from a bloody shootout at a drug lab and shows up at the door of Rell (Peele), a man who lies on his couch and smokes weed because his girl recently left him.     It is not made clear whether she left and then he started smoking weed, or did she leave because he lay on his couch and smoked weed all day?     Nonetheless, the kitten becomes Rell's reason to live and the center of his universe.      One night, Rell and his cousin Clarence (Key), (the guy with the George Michael tunes on his iPod), come home from a movie to find Rell's home ransacked and Keanu gone.     Their investigation leads to a strip joint run by a gang leader named Cheddar (Method Man), who mistakes them for two ruthless hitmen while assuming ownership of Keanu and dressing him in gold chains and a sports jersey.

Clarence and Rell have to keep up the façade of being ruthless gangsters, including changing their voices, attitudes, and bullshitting their way through one hairy situation after another.     Drugs are consumed, primarily by henpecked Clarence, who sees this adventure as just what the doctor ordered to break free from his mundane life.     Clarence has one of those drug visions movies insist are funny, but they are not.     Keanu, the kitten, speaks to Clarence in the voice of Keanu Reeves himself and then Clarence is in the middle of Michael's "Faith" video.   (Hardy har har).   

The guys go through a lot of near-death situations, car chases, and shootouts just to get Keanu back.     A running gag is how every person who comes into contact with the kitty falls instantly in love with it.     Is Keanu meant to be a parody of violent movies?     I don't know, but the shootouts and car chases feel like the real thing.     There is no exaggeration or twist put on them.     Guys get shot and they're dead.     Cars crash into things and bodies go flying.     Keanu could be an honorary Taken sequel.

Key and Peele are likable actors.    The gag here is that their characters aren't "black" enough and are forced to act "more black" in order to survive their ordeal.     This is a slippery slope in any respect.    The n-word is tossed around a lot too.    Is Keanu an examination of racial politics even within one's own race?     I've read the Key & Peele show focuses its humor on such topics.    Perhaps on TV it was funnier and more enlightening, but I'll take the SNL skit from the early 1980s in which Eddie Murphy masquerades as a white man and discovers, "When you're white, people give you things."