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film review

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, from Key & Peele fame, save Keanu from the depths of genre overkill.

How do you mock something while simultaneously celebrating it? 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. Because Wright is one of the most skilled and savvy filmmakers working today, he was able to both satirize the genre's flaws – the needless explosions! The whiplash-inducing cuts! The fetishization of guns so large there's no question as to what they're compensating for! – and embrace them, creating a fully aware comedy that was as sly as it was stupid.

It's not a trick that every filmmaker is able to pull off quite so easily, a fact Peter Atencio surely must have realized while making his feature debut with Keanu. 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. But Atencio can never quite balance his competing desires to poke fun at the genre and reinvent its clichés. Normally, this would be a fatal flaw, but lucky for Atencio, Keanu has him working with two of the most innovative comedians of their generation: Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key.

Best known for their frequently brilliant, if now concluded, sketch-comedy series Key & Peele, the two performers save Keanu from the depths of genre overkill. Which is a bit odd, as Atencio also served as the director for all 54 episodes of the pair's Comedy Central show, playing an undeniably huge part in its success. But no matter: Any of Atencio's directorial missteps are greatly overshadowed by the easy charm and wit of his leading men, who find themselves revisiting and fine-tuning familiar Key & Peele themes of racial stereotyping and toxic masculinity, to hilarious effect.

The plot is threadbare, but cutely disarming in its own way. While enduring the aftermath of a breakup, Rell (Peele) discovers an impossibly cute kitten on his doorstep, which he names Keanu. It turns out, though, that the cat was once the prized possession of a local drug dealer, and the pet quickly ends up in the hands of a rival. Enter Rell's strait-laced, George Michael-listening cousin Clarence (Key), who reluctantly agrees to help rescue the furball. (It's worth noting that while Keanu isn't necessarily named after the Matrix star, Reeves references abound – and it's no coincidence that the actor's 2014 film John Wick was about one man's violent quest to hunt down those responsible for harming his puppy.)

There's not much more you need to know about the story, save that it affords Key and Peele the opportunity to endlessly spoof black culture, or rather, what Hollywood imagines black culture to be: a crass world filled with tattooed thugs and so many utterances of the N-word that even Quentin Tarantino would blush. But this is not broad comedy – Key and Peele are sharp comic actors, and know exactly how to prick and push an audience into a realm of delightful discomfort.

They also know how to be generous co-stars, with Peele's gruff assertiveness toned down just enough to bounce off Key's prickly neuroticism. It's the type of easy chemistry you would expect from performers who've been working together for years (including an undernoticed stint on MADtv), but it's delightfully surprising to encounter all the same. As is several casting surprises sprinkled throughout the rest of the film, including one cameo that takes a quietly brilliant meta turn halfway through.

There's no question Keanu could have been more – an outrageous ode to outrageousness, rather than a splattered love letter to action tropes. But just when you think Keanu should be put to sleep, all three of its stars (nine, if you count all seven cats who play the title character) remind you that good things can come in messy packages.

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