The Keanu Reeves Project: I Love You To Death

I LOVE YOU TO DEATH (1990) - Marlon

I Love You To Death is a hard one to discuss in the context of rewatching it for the first time in decades in the year 2020.  I definitely saw this in bits and pieces as a kid but possibly never from start to finish and while I remembered some of it going into my most recent watch last night, a lot of it still felt very new to me.

What I definitely did not remember is Kevin Kline's over-the-top performance as an Italian immigrant living in the Pacific Northwest.  Kline plays Joey, a philandering restaurant and apartment owner who spends his days making pizza and his evenings on the town cheating on his wife Rosalie, played by Tracey Ullman.

Kline's performance is....certainly something.  He's essentially every bad Italian stereotype rolled into one person, speaking in an accent that would make the Mario brothers blush.

It's-a Me!  An incredibly troubling Italian stereotype!

Rosalie, who is either the stupidest woman alive or willfully ignorant chooses to ignore Joey's obvious lifestyle outside of work and constantly makes excuses on his behalf despite his obvious sexual liasons with nearly every other woman in town, including a very young Heather Graham in one of her first movie roles.

It's-a me!  Heather Graham!

The movie also features River Phoenix as Devo, who went on to become very close friends with Keanu Reeves during this filming, as one of Joey's employees as well as admirer of Rosalie. 

Rosalie eventually discovers that Joey has been cheating on her constantly, and under the advice of her Eastern European immigrant mother (another caricature of a performance) determines the only move she has is to kill him.  

It's-a me!  Phoebe Cates!

First, Rosalie attempts to poison Joey by making him a giant pot of spaghetti, because, you know, Italy, but all this really accomplishes is making Joey sick to the point of delirium but does not finish the job.

On the advice of Devo, Rosalie and her mother are introduced to easily the funniest characters in the movie, Harlan and Marlon played by William Hurt and Keanu Reeves respectively.  Harlan and Marlon are a pair of drug addicts willing to commit murder for a few hundred dollars and easily steal every successive scene they're in to the point that I wish there had been a spin-off movie about their adventures living in Tacoma, Washington.

It's-a me!  Keanu Reeves!

For the record, this now makes Keanu's third very bad haircut in a very short career to this point, although at least this time it very truly fits his character.  Harlan and Marlon spend the second act of the movie bumbling about as they try to figure out how to kill Joey, eventually shooting him in the chest after determining that bashing him to death with a baseball bat isn't the best idea.

Keanu Reeves particularly stands out here, especially in the scene where he tries to remember where the human heart is and so the resort to reciting the pledge of allegiance, and of course forgetting most of the words.

Despite the poisoning and the gunshot, Joey survives and by the end of the movie, Rosalie has forgiven him and they decide to stay married even though there's no way Joey will ever change his ways.

BEST PART: Everything with Harlon and Marlon.  They are very, very funny in this.

WORST PART: Not crediting Phoebe Cates for her small role in this.  I mean come on!  It's legend of 80's film Phoebe Cates!

Box Office Mojo information: $16 Million ($33 Million  inflation adjusted)

Rotten Tomatoes: 56% Critics, 63% Audience

IMDB: 6.4

My Movie Rating: 6/10.  It's a totally fine dark comedy but just about all of the best parts of this come from Keanu Reeves and William Hurt.  I wish they were in more of it.

Keanu Rating: 10/10.  Yes, I'm obviously a huge Keanu Reeves fan and so I'm biased in all of my reviews.  But in his limited screen time, Keanu seriously shows off his comedic chops and has some of the funniest lines in the entire movie and the only ones that made me laugh out loud, "If we keep shooting Joey, don't you think he might get suspicious?"  His performance reminded me a bit of Brad Pitt's brilliant effort as Floyd in True Romance.  

Up next:  The 1990 movie Tune in Tomorrow....I literally have never heard of this and it looks like the only place to find it is on Youtube where it's broken into six parts.  Perfect.

The Keanu Reeves Project: Parenthood

PARENTHOOD (1989) - Tod

Well, I watched this as well as my next entry a few nights ago and I meant to do this write-up sooner while this was fresher in my mind but so much for that.

It's a little frustrating that no idea anymore is original.  No matter what idea one might come up with, there's a good chance that someone has already thought of it and worse, done it better than you.  With that said, over this weekend I discovered there are not one but at least two podcasts dedicated to watching the entire Keanu Reeves filmography from start to finish, although it doesn't appear that either of them took a look at his really early made for TV work as I did, so, go me.

I also don't know if anyone has gone through this in blog form, but if they have, I'm sure they're more insightful and better written than this half-assed thing that I'm doing but since nobody is reading this anyway, I don't really care all that much.

Without going into the names of the two podcasts, I think I'm going to abandon the first one I found.  I listened to the first four of five episodes in an attempt to catch up to where I am in his filmography, but the hosts just come across as a bit annoying and definitely think they're funnier than they actually are.  At least I know I'm not funny.

I just started the second one and at least at a first impressions it seems to be a lot better and I'm going to give it a few more episodes before I decide to continue on.  The thing about this project and why I'm listening to the podcasts is that it's nice to know that there are other people out there doing what I'm doing and listening to them talk about it makes me feel like I've got some sort of quasi-friends who just sort of get the project.

The problem though, is that neither of the podcasts appear to be hosted by people who are actually fans of Keanu.  The one I'm giving up on seems to have chosen Keanu Reeves because why not, and none of the hosts seem to be particularly familiar with most of his work.  In fact, in both of the podcasts, at least one of the three hosts have already admitted to never even having seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, which in my mind is a bit troublesome when you are doing a podcast about Keanu Reeves.

The fact that these podcasts exist though give me some hope that this is actually a worthwhile project and is almost making me want to launch a podcast idea I had several years ago called "All Seagal" where I'd watch Steven Seagal's entire filmography because many of his movies are hilariously bad and also because Steven Seagal is a true piece of shit human being.

But, I'm off topic here.

Today's recap is of the 1989 movie, Parenthood, with an ensemble cast featuring Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Wiest, Jason Robards, and Rick Moranis with a heavy dose of Martha Plimpton, Keanu Reeves and a very young Joaquin Phoenix.

Haircut inspired by The Prince of Pennsylvania

Parenthood is a movie that I've caught in bits and pieces of on television for the last 25 years but never actually watched from start to finish until this viewing and aside from a minute or two here and there, I believe I've actually seen most of the movie on my previous viewings.

Parenthood is about a group of siblings dealing with....you guessed it, Parenthood.

Steve Martin is Gil, a 35 year old father of three struggling to raise his three kids, especially his eldest son who suffers from extreme anxiety.  By the way, the fact that Steve Martin is supposed to be in his mid 30's in this rather than his mid 40's was a little distracting to me even though Steve Martin has looked like he's been 45 years old since 1978.  Gil has two sisters each with their own problems.  Diane Wiest plays his sister Helen, who has a daughter in high school (Martha Plimpton as Julie) carrying on a relationship with Tod (Keanu Reeves) and a middle school aged son Garry (two R's, played by Joaquin Phoenix) who has become increasingly troubled and evasive after his parent's divorce.

There's also Gil's sister Susan, who is married to Nathan, played by Rick Moranis who is the king of helicopter parents as they attempt to raise their daughter.  Finally, Gil's brother Larry is the fuck-up of the family (played by Tom Hulce of Amadeus fame) who returns home one day with a young son, a gambling addiction, and a heavy debt to a group of gangsters.  

The movie jumps from family to family as all of the middle aged siblings attempt to raise their families while dealing with their myriad problems at home.

Given that I'd seen this in bits and pieces over the years, I didn't have a whole lot of new thoughts on this one, there are certainly some funny aspects to the movie and Keanu Reeves certainly carries his scenes as Tod, the well-intentioned slacker boyfriend to Julie.  At first glance, Tod is the exact kind of guy a parent wouldn't want their daughter dating - he's uneducated, goofy, and has a stupid haircut.  But, Tod turns out to be the male presence that Garry needs in his life as well as an understanding boyfriend and eventual husband to Julie.

Husband Material and Dunkin Donuts product placement

I don't have a whole lot of new thoughts on this one.  The movie is funny at times, sad at others and a good launching pad for Keanu Reeves as he fits his role perfectly.  I took a bit of offense at the ending of the movie where every parent (except for Larry) is shown with a new baby as most of these people appear to be on the tail end of 'new parent' age and I did worry a lot about the dysfunctional families all these new kids are about to be raised in.

Anyway, that's Parenthood, a perfectly fine movie from 1989 that you don't need to watch today if you've never seen it.

BEST PART: Pretty good performances by everyone involved.

WORST PART: General cheese scattered throughout the movie, but particularly the ending with the fake-me-out on who just had a baby.

Box Office Mojo information: $100 million domestic and the 9th highest grossing movie of 1989, not bad.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 91% Critics, 76% Audience

IMDB: 7.0

My Movie Rating: 6.5/10.  There are certainly funny moments in this and while the tone is mostly lighthearted, there are certainly moments that put this into more of a dramedy category than a pure comedy.  I found most of the cast to appear to be older than the characters they were supposed to be playing which did take me out of it a bit.  Overall, I'm not mad I watched it but I don't need to see it ever again.

Keanu Rating: 8/10.  Once again, Keanu was cast in a pretty perfect role as Tod.  He's got his good comedic moments and certainly stands out in this as a good comedic performer.

Up next: The 1990 dark comedy about a spousal hit gone wrong, I Love You To Death starring Tracey Ullman and Kevin Kline.  

The Keanu Reeves Project: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE - "Ted" Theodore Logan

I'm taking this Keanu Reeves Project pretty goddamn seriously so I really am watching every single movie he's in no matter how small the part nor how many times I might have already seen it (although I am planning on skipping over voiceover work like Toy Story 4, Deep Web and his one or two lines in the Key & Peele movie Keanu), which brings me to the teen comedy classic, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

My very first memory of Bill and Ted wasn't a memory of the movie at all, but of my cousin's recounting of it after he'd gone to see it with his friends.  My family was visiting my aunt in New York and my cousin came back from the theater and told us he'd just watched the funniest movie he'd ever seen.  He told me about the part where Bill and Ted show up in Austria during Napoleon's invasion and did his best impression, "We're in the middle of a war, dude!"  Clearly, eight year old me had to see this movie.

A few weeks later, I convinced my mother to take me and my friend David to go see it.  We arrived late, probably because my mother couldn't care at all about seeing a movie about two idiots traveling through time, and showed up right when Mr. Ryan, their history teacher, asks who Joan of Arc was.  The answer of course - "Noah's wife."

I immediately fell in love.

Over the last 31 years, I have probably seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure from start to finish at least 200 times and that is probably an underestimate.  When I was in elementary school, my best friend Michelle and I must have watched it together nearly every other weekend for a year straight, and even saw the sequel together in the theater.  We used to record "radio shows" together on her tape recorder (essentially a ten year old's version of a podcast in 1990) that we called "Bill and Gwen's Excellent Adventures," because Gwen was the female equivalent to Ted apparently.  I don't know if it's correlated or not, but Michelle grew up (as children tend to do), had a baby girl and named her Gwen.

Gods among men

During 8th and 9th grade, my friend Vincent and I probably watched it together at least once a month and reached a point where we were able to recite just about the entire movie by heart, much to the annoyance of our other friends.

As I got older, Bill and Ted became my go to movie whenever I was bored, depressed, drunk, or had nothing else to do.  It was the second or third DVD I ever purchased (the first, for some inexplicable reason was the movie Joy Ride) and there were many nights spent after a night out drinking where I'd ome home to relax and I'd throw on B & T before going to bed.

I keep a Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure poster in my den (Bogus Journey is in storage), my cats are named Bill and Ted, and I often use the screen name 'YesWayTed' for several online games.  I've got a variety of B & T paraphernalia around the house like my Ted action figure (that can't be on display because the cat version of Ted is a monster), a Ted throw pillow, and both of my Bill and Ted Funko Pops.

Bill sold separately

Basically, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a perfect movie.  Besides the fact that it's timelessly funny (no pun intended), both Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter couldn't have been better fits for their roles, even if they initially auditioned for the opposite ones.  Their on screen chemistry is magnificent and even the supporting cast makes the most with their limited lines.  Oh, and even the absolute legend George Carlin is in it!  Excellent!

In fact, if there's anything "wrong" about the movie it's that Bill and Ted, seemingly a pair of teenage stoners, are never seen smoking or even talking about weed.  Now, I don't know if that was a choice to keep the movie with a PG rating or not, but with a few tweaks it could objectively be the best stoner comedy of all time.

That said, it's not a stoner comedy.  It's simply a movie about two best friends traveling through time to pass their English exam so they aren't split up, with Ted's dad sending him off to military school in Alaska.  Bogus!  Why is this important?  Because their band, Wyld Stallyns, eventually make music that brings about world peace and a utopian society where the air is clean, the water is clean and even the dirt, it's clean!  Still unclear about the coal.

Cat versions of Bill (right) and Ted (left).  Just as stupid as the actual pair but far bigger assholes.

Despite the fact that I have seen this movie hundreds of times, there are still lines that make me laugh nearly every single time, including on my most recent watch for this project, such as:

"And I am the Duke of Ted!"

"Dust.  Wind.  Dude!"

Nearly anything Napoleon does.  

As part of my mission to indoctrinate my ten year old nephew with the movies I grew up with, I recently watched both Bill and Ted movies with him and it filled me with joy that he actually enjoyed them both, particularly when Genghis Khan goes apeshit in a sporting goods store.

I've been reading rumors and discussions about Bill and Ted 3 for what feels like forever and I can't believe it's finally, actually been filmed and being released this summer.  In fact, if there's one thing that REALLY makes me anxious about the ongoing pandemic (you know, aside from losing my job and feeling completely helpless in the face of government incompetence on a scale never seen before) it's that the movie will be postponed as many others have already and I'll have to wait another year or more for it to come out.  My hopes and expectations are exceedingly low - most sequels that come out more than a four or five years after the previous film are almost always terrible, and Bogus Journey was released in 1991...

That said, I find it hard to believe that Keanu Reeves, who is now a megastar that he certainly wasn't in 1991, would sign up to do the new movie if he wasn't incredibly confident in it.  I'm not saying Keanu doesn't make bad movies (I'm looking at you Devil's Advocate and what I hear is Replicas), but I am saying I find it hard to believe he would desecrate the legend of Bill and Ted unless he thought it was going to be, well, excellent.

A few other side notes - 

*I love that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter became lifelong friends after making this movie together.  While Keanu went on to have an extensive careers as a leading man, Alex Winter has more or less been forgotten despite the fact that he's gone on to produce and direct a number of movies including the 2015 documentary "Deep Web' about the controversial/illegal website, The Silk Road (with narration by none other than Keanu).

*The soundtrack to the movie is also spectacular and yes, I also owned it on cassette tape when I was a kid and listened to it non-stop.

*It has always bothered me that Beethoven is arrested during the mall montage.  I'd think the store manager would be ecstatic that someone was driving so much foot traffic to his store and Beethoven never does anything wrong or illegal.

*Despite being a 30 year old movie, Bill and Ted remains immensely quotable.  From "San Dimas High School Football Rules!" to "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K," it's rare that more than a few days go by where I don't find myself saying a line from Bill and Ted in one context or another.

*Considering I've seen this movie as much as I have, I rarely catch something new on repeated viewings.  But, perhaps because I was watching this time on my computer with headphones on I actually noticed something for the first time: during Bill and Ted's presentation at the end, after Billy the Kid introduces himself, someone in ADR yells "Yeah, and I'm General Custer!"  That made me laugh.

BEST PART: Oh boy, I don't even know.  From a general sense, the on screen chemistry between Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves.  From a scene standpoint, probably the part outside the Circle K, but I mean, don't quote me on this, this movie is perfect.

WORST PART: N/A.

Box Office Mojo Information: $40.5 Million, 31st highest grossing movie of 1989.

Rotten Tomatoes: 79% Critics, 75% Audience.

IMDB: 6.9 (further proving that IMDB ratings are fucking stupid)

My Movie Rating: 10/10.  What, were you not expecting that?  Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure will be a part of me until the day I die and is easily one of my top ten movies of all time.  It's immensely rewatchable and still funny today.  If you're an adult and never seen it, I'm guessing you wouldn't enjoy it now, but show it to your kids and let them have fun with it.

Keanu Rating: 10/10.  I mean, he's perfectly cast as Ted, this was the character he was born to play.

Up next: Parenthood - a movie I've probably seen a dozen times but never in one sitting in linear order.  I wonder if there's anything I've missed....

The Keanu Reeves Project: Dangerous Liasons

DANGEROUS LIASONS (Movie - 1988) - Chevalier Danceny

Welcome back to The Keanu Reeves Project, where I'm sitting down and watching Keanu Reeves movies in order (by IMDB anyway) from the beginning of his career to today.

My plan is to not skip over anything, as best as I can, although I do think I'm going to skip over any voice work, which I don't think is much of a long list.  I'm also planning on rewatching anything I've already seen, be it just once or a hundred times.

My latest movie is the 1988 movie Dangerous Liasons, based on the 1782 novel, Les Liasons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos and the play from 1982.

The movie stars Glenn Close as the Marquise de Merteuil and John Malkovich as Vicomte de Valmont, two sex crazed French aristocrats living in Paris, determined to fuck with about as many of their friends and family members as possible in a bunch of weird sex games because banging each other would be too boring.

Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun - you don't stare, it's too risky!

I don't really feel like describing the entire movie, but the central plot is that Glenn Close challenges Malkovich to bang Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfieffer) because Glenn Close used to bone down with her now-husband and now she's out for revenge.  If he succeeds (with written proof of said banging) he gets to plow Glenn Close, Parisian style. 

Meanwhile, Malkovich is basically the horniest dude in all of Paris and he's already trying to stick it in Uma Thurman among all the other side chicks he's got, including nameless other women and even a prostitute or two.  Malkovich spends a good part of the movie being a lecherous fuck, scheming about how to get anything that works into bed, and writing letters on naked ladies backs. 

Then, on the side we've got Keanu, playing a wealthy but still lower class "intellect" that Glenn Close hires to teach Uma Thurman music.  He's very artsy and emotional and completely miscast in this role and if you hadn't already guessed, Glenn Close also starts fucking him on the side.  This movie is basically the 1790's version of Melrose Place set in Paris.  

I am a sensitive artist

Eventually, both Glenn Close and Malkovich get their comeuppance - Malkovich in the form of a duel with Keanu (which he loses and is killed), and Glenn Close when Keanu shows all the rich folk her letters to Malkovich in which she lays out just how fucking devious and terrible she is.  It's a good thing that #MeToo wasn't a thing back then because Malkovich would have been taken down way sooner.  

It's a little weird seeing Malkovich this young in a movie as he's one of those guys that I feel like was 50 years old when he was born, and it's doubly weird that he's some sort of 18th century sex god but hey, the movie was very well received and nominated (and won) several academy awards.  

You banged my sort of girlfriend you Parisian dickweed!

All told, a pretty good movie although not up my alley.  I'm not one for period pieces and despite the fact I posted two pictures of Keanu, he's barely in this movie which might have been for the best as I'll mention a little more below.

BEST PART: Glenn Close is really good in this even if we hate her. 

WORST PART: John Malkovich as an 18th century Lothario?  I just don't get it.  Also whatever accent Keanu is doing. 

Box Office Mojo information: $35 Million and just the 202nd highest grossing movie in 1988.

Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Critics, 83% Audience

IMDB: 7.6

My Movie Rating: 6.5/10.  It's certainly not that it's a bad movie, just not really for me.  You can definitely tell that this was adapted from a play as it's extremely dialog heavy and set essentially in three different places.  A lot of wealthy aristocrats sitting around fancy parlors and scheming against one another just isn't really my thing and I just find John Malkovich slightly unbelievable as some kind of Don Juan that every woman in Paris is trying to get plowed by.  

Keanu Rating: 2/10.  Woof.  Not really his fault, this seems like a casting job gone awry.  I also hate these period movies that take place in Europe where everyone seems to be doing their own accents and Keanu still just sounds like he's from southern California.  He's really only in four or five scenes and is not even particularly important to the movie but even if you're a huge fan you can definitely skip this one if you're just watching for Keanu.

Up next - Is it....is it actually time?  It is!  Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure!

The Keanu Reeves Project: Permanent Record

PERMANENT RECORD (Movie, 1988) - Chris

Lost your job, your health insurance, your ability to do anything outside? Feeling lonely, depressed, ridden with anxiety?

Well, have I got the movie for you!  It's Permanent Record, the 1988 teenage suicide movie starring Keanu Reeves as Chris and Alan Boyce as David, a pair of best friends living it up in their final year of high school.

I'm unfamiliar with much of Keanu's earliest work and as I do for other movies these days, I like going into a movie with as little knowledge as possible.  I avoid trailers as much as I can, especially as they ruin entire movies now and have been for years.  At this point, I generally rely on my friends with whom I share similar tastes to recommend things to me.  I don't need more than a short sentence description much beyond "it's really good" or "it's really funny" or "it has Keanu Reeves in it."  Then I put that movie on this giant list, wait five years and forget the little I knew about it and finally get around to watching it.  It's not that efficient of a plan but it works for me.

So anyway, I went into Permanent Record not knowing this was about teenage suicide so I was a little surprised when it actually happened.  Alan Boyce plays David, a high school senior who is spending his time writing music for his band, banging a hot girl from school (who wonders why if they're hooking up all the time why they're not going steady), and hanging out with his best friend Chris, played by Keanu Reeves.

"No David, what I'm saying is this band NEEDS Eddie Van Halen!"

In fact, we don't think anything is amiss until he's called into the principal's office to find out he's actually gotten great news - he's been accepted into a prestigious music school.  But David doesn't take it as great news, he has a full-on panic attack, saying he's under far too much pressure between his band and writing songs as well as acting as the music conductor for the upcoming school musical. 

Aside from that scene, the first 30 minutes of Permanent Record took a far different tone than what was to come.  There were a few scenes that were played for some laughs, like Chris and David sneaking into a record studio to watch Lou Reed (yes, actually the real Lou Reed) record a song.  There's also a pretty funny scene of the auditions for the school musical, The H.M.S. Pinafore which played a big like a compilation of the worst American Idol auditions.

I'm sorry 1988 Eminem, you were just a pit too pitchy.  

One night early into the school year, Chris and David head to a party at the shore, but something is clearly wrong with David as he walks out of the party, alone along a cliff.  Chris, a bit buzzed after a few beers, sneakily follows behind with the intention of surprising him by jumping out from behind a rock.  So it comes as a shock to Chris when he jumps out and David is gone.  On the edge of a cliff one moment, dead at the bottom the next.

The following hour of the movie has a complete tonal shift as Keanu Reeves ascends into the lead role attempting to cope with his friend's death, along with the rest of David's circle of friends.

There are a few subplots like Chris attempting to finish David's last incomplete song and David's friends trying to organize a memorial service to him before the school superintendent shuts it all down for questionable reasons.

Just Keanu and his two 39 year old bandmates.

The back end of this movie really ended up being a lot heavier than I was expecting, particularly because David's friends and families never really learn why David killed himself.  And that's also what I really liked about this movie as it all felt very real.  Even the adults in this movie (aside from David's bandmates who all looked like they were at least 20 years older than David and Chris) came across as real people unlike the stereotypes you might be expecting from 80s teen movies.  

I'm glad I went into this with no expectations.  No, it was not a perfect movie.  Some of the tonal shifts were downright confusing and the ending was a little too cliche but overall I was pleasantly surprised by this one and glad I went in without knowing anything about it.

BEST PART: Surprisingly believable characters, the sequence where Keanu Reeves almost kills his friend's younger brother while drunk driving and the believable emotional response afterwards.

WORST PART: I can't think of one, this was a shockingly good movie, maybe because I had such low expectations.

Box Office Mojo information: $1.9 Million

Rotten Tomatoes: 50% Critics, 69% Audience.  69 dudes.  Roger Ebert particularly LOVED this movie and called it one of the best of the year.  

IMDB: 6.4

My Movie Rating: 7/10.  Definite bummer of a movie but really good, believable performances throughout.  Wouldn't recommend while in isolation for coronavirus though.  

Keanu Rating: 8/10.  He's pretty goofy in the beginning but definitely takes a much more serious tone after Chris' death and gives a shockingly good performance.  

Up next - The 1988 movie Dangerous Liasons.  I feel like this is a pretty well known movie but not only have I never seen it, but I think the only thing I know about it is that Cruel Intentions was an updated remake which I've also never seen and also know very little about.  But Glenn Close and John Malkovich?  I'm in!

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.  

The Keanu Reeves Project: The Night Before

THE NIGHT BEFORE  (Movie, 1988) - Winston

Apparently sometime in 1986 or 1987, someone out in Hollywood caught the mediocre but not horribly bad TV movie, "The Brotherhood of Justice" (formerly reviewed on this blog) and fell in love with the chemistry between Keanu Reeves and noted criminal and con artist, Lori Loughlin and decided to put the two of them in a feature film called "The Night Before."

This is a movie that I think I'd caught bits and pieces of on TV as a kid, but I certainly have never seen all of it and anything I did see back in the late 80's or early 90's had completely vanished from my brain when I sat down to watch this one.

"The Night Before" is sort of a cross between Adventures in Babysitting, The Hangover, and Taken.  Maybe it's because I was coming off the painstakingly bad experience that was "Babes in Toyland," because I was pleasantly surprised with "The Night Before" and even had a handful of actual laugh out loud moments.

The movie opens with Winston (Keanu Reeves), alone, somewhere on the wrong side of the tracks (literally) in Los Angeles.  He looks pretty beat up, he gets his car stolen and he can't remember exactly how he ended up here, except that his night started with him taking the hot girl from school to the Prom.

Check out the price of those donuts!

Through a series of flashbacks, Winston starts remembering how the night started and ventures through a journey of East LA, searching for his Prom date so her police chief father doesn't literally murder him for losing her.

Tara (Lori Loughlin) has made it no secret that the only reason she's headed to the Prom with Winston is because she lost a bet with one of her friends.  Apparently, in this movie, I'm supposed to believe that Keanu Reeves is the school geek and Vice President of the Astronomy club.  This was really one of my only true gripes with this movie.  Keanu Reeves?  Geek?  It's 1988, they could have at least put some pocket protectors on him or given him glasses....or anything really.  There is literally no effort made to make it appear that he's anything other than a pretty cool, friendly guy.

As far as I'm concerned, this is what qualified for a geek in 80s pop culture.

Regardless, Tara is disgusted by him and disgusted by the entire situation.

We quickly learn that Winston had gotten lost on the highway, driven over some train tracks, and ended up lost in East LA.  Living without GPS really sucked.

Winston, chill dude that he is, decides to make the best of the situation.  Instead of going to Prom, let's find something fun to do here!

Any movie with Tiny Lister is A-OK by me.  

They wind up inside a club where Winston loses Tara's credit card to a bartender, who proceeds to drug Winston's ginger ale and tequila (I love that he ordered this) with an unknown substance.  This in turn causes Winston to accidentally sell Tara to a pimp named Tito, and he spends the rest of the movie in the present, trying to track Tara down before she's sold off to human traffickers intent on shipping her off to Morocco.

There's also a pretty funny dance sequence here with Keanu and Lori to a George Clinton song, who is actually playing at the club.

Funkadelic

A bunch of hijinks ensue as Winston tries to track Tara down, all while he's under the threat of being killed by Tito at sunrise. 

Spoiler alrert: Winston finds Tara, wards of Tito and saves the day, all without being murdered by Tara's father.

Still not quite John Wick.

BEST PART: The entire sequence at the club, genuinely funny.

WORST PART: More uncomfortable sexualization of an underage girl and the filmmaker's not really grasping the implications of some of the storyline about sex trafficking...

Box Office Mojo information:  N/A - Oddly, I could not find any information on this...maybe it was straight to video?

Rotten Tomatoes: 55% Audience

IMDB: 6.4

My Movie Rating: 6.5/10.  As far as 80's teen comedies go, you could do a lot worse than this one.  Is it stupid?  Yes.  Is it believable?  No.  But Keanu Reeves is legitimately funny in this, particularly during the scene where he's drugged.  This movie isn't going to change your world, but if you're a Keanu fan it's well worth the 90 minutes for some very casual or light hearted viewing.  

Keanu Rating: 7/10.  As said above, he had some very funny moments in here.  My only real complaint is the horrible miscasting here of Keanu as a geek.  

Up next - The 1988 movie "The Prince of Pennsylvania."  I have no clue what this is.

The Keanu Reeves Project: Babes in Toyland

BABES IN TOYLAND (TV Movie, 1986) - Jack Fenton/Jack Be Nimble

It looks like I have finally come to the end of Keanu Reeves' illustrious career in TV movies and not a moment too soon.  I've got 90 some odd movies to go and I'm willing to bet none will be as trying on my mental stability or patience as my viewing tonight of the 1986 TV Movie, "Babes in Toyland."

So far, for much of this project I've done some cursory research on the movies I've been watching just to get a little bit of background, but if I spend one more second on anything having to do with "Babes in Toyland" other than this blog post, I'm going to blow my brains out.

"Babes in Toyland" was a remake of a 1960 movie and is basically the Wizard of Oz for Christmas, made for mentally slow children.  It stars an 11 year old Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves and Richard Mulligan (who you might remember from the TV shows "Soap" and "Empty Nest).  I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this movie is the reason that Drew Barrymore started doing hard drugs by age 12.

I know it's a family Christmas movie that was made for TV in the mid 80's but this thing was fucking unwatchable.

When trying to find this movie online, I was confronted with two miserable choices:

The TWO AND A HALF HOUR "Director's Cut" Version

OR

The far more appealing 90 minute version, however this one was someone's low-rent Mystery Science Theater 3000 version with some random guy making comments throughout the movie.

Neither option seemed like a particularly good choice so I bit the bullet and went with the director's cut.

Now, I'm not going to lie to you, I sat through most of this putrid piece of garbage in double speed, so the two and a half our long version only took me about an hour and fifteen minutes to absorb, which is still time I'm upset I'll never get back.

"Get me out of here."

Here's a summary of what I think I just watched:

Drew Barrymore is visiting her sister on Christmas Eve at the toy store she works at.  The store owner, played by Richard Mulligan is a real hard-ass and for reasons that truly don't matter, fires Keanu Reeves.  He also gets a little bit rapey with Keanu's 17 year old girlfriend, which is pretty cool for a family film.

Keanu, Drew Barrymore and her sister are driving home from the store in a blizzard when the car veers off the road and Drew Barrymore flies out of the car and into a tree (I wish she had died and the movie ended right there) and for the next two fucking hours we're whisked away to Toyland, which was basically a bad fever dream version of Oz.

The fuck is this shit?

Toyland is basically inhabited by a bunch of nursery rhyme characters and a slew of furries, who I assume are all fucking each other behind the scenes.  When Drew Barrymore arrives, she finds out that Bartleby (Richard Mulligan) is the town villain and he's trying to marry Jack Be Nimble's (Keanu Reeves) girlfriend and take over the town cookie factory.  You see, in Toyland cookies are currency and seriously who gives a fuck.

This is all very upsetting.

Bartleby controls a couple of minions as well as a slew of of evil monster things, and he frames Jack Be Nimble for the destruction of a bunch of cookies and Jack is sent to Toyland Jail.  Okay, do you give a shit about any of this?

I'm so glad I wasn't on acid while watching this.

Oh, and did I mention that this is a musical?  Yeah, it's a musical, and the songs are all fucking abysmal sung by a bunch of lip syncing actors.  Drew Barrymore sounds like a 30 year old woman and Mr. Miyagi....well I can't even explain.  Oh yeah, that's right, Pat Morita is in this godforsaken piece of trash as the Toymaster.

WAX OFF.

So there's a bunch of hijinks and prison escapes and more nonsense.  They mention Cincinatti at least two dozen times because that's where Drew Barrymore is from.  There actually was one funny bit about this, where the Toymaster tells Drew he knows about Cincinatti when nobody else in Toyland does.  "You must be very proud of Pete Rose," he tells her.  Uh....yeah, super proud.  Oh, 1986, how we don't miss you.

If I was a kid and my parents put me in front of the TV to watch this at Christmas it would have become very clear to me very quickly that there is no god.

My brain is on fire

Eventually there's a big battle between the Toymaster's toy soldiers come to life and Bartleby's army of black Klansmen.  Or at least that's what they looked like.

Make it stop

Bartleby is expelled from Toyland, Drew Barrymore wakes up and is surrounded by all her friends - the tin man, the scarecrow and the cowardly lion.  It was all just a dream.

Fucking kill me.

BEST PART: IT'S FINALLY OVER.

WORST PART: FUCKING EVERYTHING. 

Box Office Mojo information:  N/A

Rotten Tomatoes: 50% Audience

IMDB: 5.4

My Movie Rating: 0/10.  I would rather have Keanu Reeves take a dump on my face than watch this ever again.

Keanu Rating: 1/10.  He's bad, Drew Barrymore is bad, Pat Morita is bad, everyone is fucking bad.  

Up next - The 1988 movie "About Last Night" starring Keanu Reeves and....Lori Loughlin?  Again?  Seriously?