The Keanu Reeves Project: The Prince of Pennsylvania

THE PRINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA  (Movie, 1988) - Rupert

To note - I watched this movie several nights ago and have been putting off writing about it and as such, the Keanu Reeves project, which is supposed to be posted every other day if not daily, has been delayed.  I've just been having a hard time sitting down to write about this and in turn, I've forgotten almost the entire movie.  Because that's the kind of movie it was.  Completely forgettable.  So forgettable in fact, that I couldn't even find a trailer to post on this blog, so instead, I'll show you the two movies posters available online.  

First, there's this one:

Oh hey, you might be thinking, this looks kind of cool.  He's the King of the Badlands, the Rebel of the Road, the Prince of Pennsylvania!   It looks like it might have some sort of dystopic, Road Warrior type of vibe.  Keanu is looking very serious, gun slung over his shoulder, while a line of police stand around waiting to confront him.  Ominous.  Action.  Excitement.  

Well, this is about the most misleading movie poster you could find, so how about I dig up the other one:

Oh here we go.  This one is also a little confusing but certainly more appropriate.  Keanu sure looks a lot less menacing in this one, doesn't he?

So, this movie is a big pile of steaming hot shit.  It's all over the place tonally and has no idea what it wants to be.  Supposedly, this is the plot summary:

"A teenager in love, who needs money to arrange his future life with his mistress, kidnaps his own father for ransom but nobody cares."

That's....sort of the plot, except the kidnapping doesn't happen until about 50 minutes into a 90 minute long movie and the whole "nobody cares" part is just about all of one scene.

So what the fuck is this movie?

I'll do my best to describe it as quickly as possible because frankly, I don't want to think about this one for more than another five to ten minutes.  

Rupert is a high school dropout living in bumfuck Pennsylvania with his father, a coal miner, his mother and his little brother (who may as well not have even been in this).  He's supposedly a genius (we're told this by several characters athough he does absolutely nothing in this to back up the characterization) but he's got no real direction in life, other than the fling he's having with a much older woman who runs an ice cream shop on the edge of town.

Caution: Genius at work

Rupert knows his mother is cheating on his father with his father's best friend while he aimlessly wanders through life in a small town.  He also befriends a group of bikers and takes them to the school dance, which is having a "Dallas"/"Dynasty" theme, something so entirely 80's that I can barely relate to it.

The bikers shot JR

After about 50 minutes of the movie wandering aimlessly, Rupert gets the idea to kidnap his father in order to get the money his father is going to receive by selling a chunk of land he has on the edge of town for a few hundred thousand dollars.  Because he's a slacker with no goals in life, his father has already conscripted him to go work in the mine, which Rupert uses as the perfect (?) opportunity to drug his father and kidnap him with the help of his girlfriend.

I think I"m getting the black lung, pop.

During the kidnapping, his dad realizes that he's been a shitty father, forgives Rupert and they wind up down in the mine where Rupert thinks his father is stashing a big chunk of money, from having secretly already selling his land.

When his girlfriend turns him into the police (sort of) because she's got a long-time on-again off-again relationship with the chief of police, the cops come looking for him in the mine and accidentally cause a giant explosion from which everyone escapes.

The movie ends with Rupert heading out of town, looking for a new life in Pittsburgh.

If my synopsis wasn't great, it's because the movie makes little to no sense and really doesn't know what it wants to be as a film.

It had the opportunity to show what it's like being a genius growing up in a small mining town with no real opportunities but instead spend most of 90 minutes meandering around without any sort of clear direction.  There were one or two actually funny moments, like when Keanu accidentally drinks the wrong thermos of poisoned coffee meant for his dad and he truly commits to an epic spittake, but for most of 90 minutes I was bored and waiting for this to end.

Smells like poison

BEST PART: The sequence where Keanu tries to drug his dad with poison coffee.  Actually funny.

WORST PART: I don't know.  Tone?  Pacing?  There being no fucking point to this?  

Box Office Mojo information: $5,415.  Yikes.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 14% Critics, 49% Audience

IMDB: 5.8

My Movie Rating: 3.5/10.  You can certainly skip this one.  Tonally, it's all over the place going from serious to slapstick and back to serious again.  The cast isn't bad but the writing is relatively terrible.  I think with a handful of tweaks this could have been a decent movie, but all hope was abandoned after the first twenty or so minutes.  

Keanu Rating: 3/10.  He's certainly nothing special in this.  He's supposed to be some sort of small town genius, but comes across as a goofball loser.  On the bright side, it's Keanu's first on screen performance riding a motorcycle.  Or....a moped at least.  

Up next - Permanent Record.  I also don't know what this is but I hope I can find it online somewhere.