The Keanu Reeves Project - Speed

SPEED (1994) - Jack Traven

Well buckle up, strap in, hold on tight, and get ready for the thrill-ride that is the 1994 action thriller, "Speed."

This is one of the Keanu movies I've been looking forward to rewatching since I started this project.  It's not like I haven't seen "Speed" many times over - of course I have, I'm not a complete asshole.  But "Speed" is one of these movies that I've probably only watched in its entirety from start to finish a handful of times, including its original theater run in 1994.  However, it is on TV with such frequency, or at least it used to be that I've certainly caught it in 30 minute clips dozens of times or more.  For as many times as I've seen it in drips and drabs and as big a fan of Keanu Reeves as I am, I'm actually a little surprised that I don't even own this movie in some format or another.

By 1994, Keanu Reeves was arguably a movie star if not a mega-star.  He had been involved in a small handful of huge hit movies, but only one action movie to this point as Johnny Utah in "Point Break," and I would argue that his performance as Jack Traven in "Speed" launched him in to that category of superstardom.

"Speed" did huge box office numbers and became a part of the American lexicon, at least for a short while, including two clips from two of my favorite shows from the 90s that referenced the movie:

If you are an adult over the age of 20, there can't really be a way that you don't know "Speed," a movie with a relatively simple premise that is executed in a spectacular fashion - a mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) rigs a bus to explode if it slows to under 50 miles an hour and only one man can save the day - our hero Keanu Reeves as Jack Traven.

While I don't generally like to use these posts to share random trivia and facts for these movies, I did read two interesting tidbits that I wanted to share:

First, Keanu Reeves was far from the first choice to play Jack.  The top choice?  Inexplicably, it was Stephen Baldwin.  For the life of me, I cannot understand how this was any sort of logical choice.  Apparently, the argument was that Keanu Reeves was not a big enough star....and Stephen Baldwin was?  I mean, I guess who could forget him as Jimmy Teeters in the 1993 movie, "Posse," or his epic performance as Travis Graham in "Bitter Harvest," or as Stuart in "Threesome?"  I'm of course joking because nobody remembers any of these movies.

Nope.

Second, in the original script, the bus was rigged to explode if its speed dropped below....20 miles an hour.  I can't imagine how that could have been thrilling in any sort of way.  They could have stayed in a parking lot the entire time.  Thrilling. 

Not only did "Speed" launch Keanu Reeves to superstardom, but the same can also be said for Sandra Bullock, who was the one of the only actors who went on to star in the oft-panned sequel, "Speed 2: Cruise Control," a movie I'm thankful that I don't need to watch for this project. 

I think part of what makes "Speed" such a classic movie is because the stakes are high and director Jan de Bont truly keeps his foot on the gas (pun intended) for the entire duration of the film.  On my rewatch for this project it really dawned on me that there is a good 50-60 minutes where the audience is forced to hold their collective breath while the bus speeds through the highways of Los Angeles, avoiding several close calls including the epically famous "bus jump" sequence.

Of course, it's a movie and so we ultimately know that the bus isn't going to explode, at least not with our heroes (and most of the extras) still on board.  Which is why it's always been a dream of mine to remake a movie like this but have the bus explode and kill everyone on board in say, minute 20.  Then the rest of the movie would be about Keanu Reeves' family dealing with his untimely death.  It would be the ultimate fake-out.  We'd cut the trailer to look like a thrilling action/adventure, but the movie would really just end up being a serious melodrama about one family's grieving process.

Audiences would hate it.

It's the same reason I want to make a shot for shot remake of one of my favorite movies, "The Karate Kid" except when Daniel gets to the tournament he gets knocked out immediately after "You're the Best" kicks in.  The record scratches, the music gets cut-off, Daniel loses and Johnny wins the tournament.  Allie dumps Daniel and gets back with Jonny and Mr. Miyagi has a heart attack and dies.

I think it would be hilarious.

Because I love "Speed," and because it is probably one of Keanu Reeves' most famous movies I'm not going to bother with much more of a recap of this.  If you haven't watched it from start to finish, do yourself a favor and go do that.  Rather than a recap, I just want to point out a few holes in logic I noticed in my recent viewing that certainly don't take away from the movie being anything other than awesome.

In the beginning of the movie, Jack and Harry (Jeff Daniels) foil Howard's (Dennis Hopper) elevator ransom plan and Howard ostensibly blows himself up in the parking garage, leaving the cops to assume he's dead.  But when someone explodes in a confined space like that, shouldn't there have been some blood and body parts strewn around?  Shouldn't the cops have been able to figure out that the bomber wasn't dead?

Dennis Hopper mentions that it took him two years to setup the elevator job that opens the movie and after foiling this plot both Jack and Harry are given medals in a televised show within what I assume can only be a matter of days or weeks.  Yet, Dennis Hopper is able to setup the bus job almost immediately.  Either he wasted a shitload of time on the elevator plan or he learned a whole lot from that plan in order to devise the next one.  Sure, I'll just go with the latter. 

Also, where's the traffic?  I feel like I am always hearing about how bad traffic in LA is.  This is kind of addressed when they get on a newly built and unused highway, but what about all the traffic up until that point?  This takes place during morning rush hour on a workday.  Maybe that's why the initial script called for 20 miles an hour. 

8:00 rush hour

Speaking of the day and time, we see Dennis Hopper on multiple occasions with an array of televisions, mostly on news stations.  However, he has one TV set up on a football game.  What football game is he watching at 8:30 in the morning on a Tuesday?  I suppose it could be a recording on a VHS tape but....why?

But let's forget about all this because at the end of the day, who cares?  "Speed" is awesome, plot holes and logic be damned.

A few quick things to note:

*Apparently the opening elevator sequence was inspired by director Jan de Bont's own experience being trapped on a stuck elevator on the 40th floor while filming "Die Hard."  That's pretty terrifying.  I also got trapped in an elevator once about 18 months ago, and even though my elevator was only about two feet off the ground floor, it was still a pretty scary experience for 45 minutes.  Unfortunately, I was saved by a big, fat guy from Otis elevator and not by Keanu Reeves.

*Keanu Reeves did most of his own stunts for this movie, which he has gone on to do for many of his other actions movies.  Just further proves that Keanu Reeves is awesome.

*This marks Keanu's second movie also featuring Dennis Hopper, the first being "River's Edge."  Dennis Hopper is noticeably better in "Speed," and makes a pretty fun villain in this.

*I am probably wrong, but I think one of the cast members of the current season of 90 Day Fiance was an extra in this.  If you are unfamiliar, Yolanda is a 50 something year old woman who is the 'victim' of a very obvious, and very blatant romance catfish by a Nigerian guy claiming to be a hunky British 30 year old.

Oh Yolanda, you sad, sad woman

"In my heart, I know that Williams is not a bus bomber."

Box Office Mojo Information: $121 million domestic ($270 million inflation adjusted), $161 million international on a $30 million budget.  The 7th highest grossing movie of 1994, the 547th highest grossing movie of all time and the 93rd highest grossing R rated movie.

Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Critics, 76% Audience - I'm actually a little surprised that these numbers are not inversed and that critics liked this that much more than the audience, not that either of those scores are low.  For the record, "Speed 2" has a 4% critics score, marking a 90% difference which has to be one of the biggest sequel disparities on record.  

IMDB: 7.2

My Movie Rating: 9/10.  I really don't watch a lot of action movies but when I do, there's a good chance Keanu Reeves is involved.  "Speed" is absolutely one of my favorite all time action movies, it still makes me hold my breath even if I know exactly what's going to happen.

Keanu Rating: 8/10.  It's sort of funny to read that he wasn't considered a big enough star to pull this off during the original casting conversations.  

Up next: the 1995 movie, "Johnny Mnemonic," a cyberpunk movie that probably has some laughably bad visions for the future.  I've never seen it and have heard it's pretty terrible so I guess we'll see.  

The Keanu Reeves Project - Little Buddha

LITTLE BUDDHA (1993) - Siddhartha

It looks like I'm about to hit a bit of a rough patch here in the career of Keanu Reeves as I journey into the mid 90's.  In fact, up until I hit "The Matrix" several movies from now, I have a lot that I am NOT looking forward to, including today's entry, "Little Buddha."

If there's been one overarching feeling I've had so far sitting through Keanu's list of movies that I have not seen before it would be boredom.  I felt this way during "My Own Private Idaho," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," "Dracula," and "The Prince of Pennsylvania."  My feeling of wanting to shoot myself in the face during "Babes in Toyland" might be a cousin to boredom as well.

My recent viewing of "Little Buddha" continued my trend of boring movies I hadn't seen before, making me realize that hey, maybe there's a REASON I have never seen some of these movies.  And the reason is that they suck.  Boredom is the main reason it took me three sittings to get through all of the nearly two and a half hour slog that was this movie.  

I went into "Little Buddha" knowing near nothing about it so it came to me as quite a shock that Keanu Reeves is playing....Siddhartha AKA Buddha, who is, you know, a guy from ancient India.  You may or may not know this but Keanu's ethnic heritage is a mixture of a number of things but one of the things he namely is NOT is Indian, or anything resembling Indian.  So, his casting in this role is just a tiny bit baffling to me.  Maybe there were no Indian actors working in Hollywood in 1994?  After all, "Little Buddha" is just a few years removed from Fisher Stevens playing an Indian guy in both Short Circuit 1 and 2.

Just a reminder that yeah, this is a thing that happened.

"Little Buddha" takes place halfway in the present and halfway in the past.  The present storyline is about a group of Tibetan monks searching for the reincarnation of one of their teachers, which leads them to find a little boy in Seattle who they think is a prime candidate.  They eventually convince his parents (played by Bridget Fonda and Chris Isaak, who I will get to momentarily) to allow the child to go to Nepal for further examination to see if he is in fact who they think he is.  

The other storyline is the one that features Keanu Reeves and tells the story of the Buddha and how he came to be.  This part of the movie was slightly more interesting to me, particularly because I know very little about the origins of Buddhism.  Of course, this is a movie and without doing further research necessary, I have no idea if what I watched on screen is the actual mythology or not.  

He'll be out protesting for a haircut soon with the rest of the COVIDiots

Some of the performances in "Little Buddha" are downright bad.  Bridget Fonda is fine in her limited screen time, but the little kid is insufferably terrible, and I hate to say it but Keanu Reeves kind of stinks, although he was obviously horribly miscast in this role.

With that said, the single worst performance of the movie and possibly second worst performance in this entire project so far goes to Chris Isaak who gives the stiffest, most wooden performance I've seen in this project so far next to the emergency room doctor from my last recap of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

My impression of Chris Isaak in "Little Buddha."

After watching "Little Buddha," I read a small handful of critic reviews to see if there was something I was missing since I didn't find this to be particularly enjoyable.  Critics seemed to really appreciate the art direction and cinematography but I just couldn't get past the constant use of color filters which started to drive me crazy about halfway through.

BLUE filter!

RED filter!

ORANGE filter!

No real side notes on this one other than to say that I have no need to see this ever again.

Box Office Mojo Information: $4.7 million domestic ($10.7 million inflation adjusted) / $3 million worldwide on a 35 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGET, HOLY SHIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME?   153rd highest grossest movie of 1993.  How the hell did this movie cost $35 million to make?  Wow.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 68% Critics, 53% Audience.  This seems about right but based on it being a gigantic flop I'm a little surprised these numbers aren't lower.  

IMDB: 6.1

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  To repeat, I was mostly bored throughout and if it weren't for the saving grace of some of the origination story I'd be giving this a 3.  

Keanu Rating: 3/10.  He is miscast, he may or may not be trying to do an Indian accent at points, and he really never should have been in this in the first place.  This is not entirely his fault.

Up next: the 1994 movie, "Speed."  Fuck.  Yes.  This is the last movie before I hit a real dead zone of movies I'm not excited about.

The Keanu Reeves Project - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES (1993) - Julian Gitche

A few posts ago, I felt relieved to know that I would never have to watch another Gus Van Sant movie again in my life as I do not enjoy his work and basically hated "My Own Private Idaho."

Unfortunately, I did not realize ahead of time that I'd be subjected to yet another Van Sant piece of garbage known as the 1993 movie, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

I feel like I have a lot to say here so this post might be just a tad bit rambling.

First, I'd like to start off with the first two paragraphs of Roger Ebert's original review:

I haven't read the Tom Robbins novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.  Perhaps it would help if I had.  Perhaps the book would make the new movie of the sane name explicable if not enjoyable.  I cannot say. 

What I am sure of is that "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" is one of the more empty pointless, baffling films I can remember, and the experience of viewing it is an exercise in nothingness.

He went on to express how much he hated this movie and ended up giving it half a star, which frankly, might be a generous rating.

What really annoys me about this movie is the lies it tells in the opening credits.  I suppose it's an ensemble cast with Uma Thurman being the only person in more than three or four scenes.  But Keanu Reeves is 4th billed in this and he has maybe three lines in the whole film and appears in a whopping two scenes.  But the list of recognizable names in this is extensive:

Lorraine Bracco, Pat Morita, Angie Dickinson, John Hurt, Ed Begley Jr, Carol Kane, Sean Young, Crispin Glover, Roseanne Barr, Buck Henry (Liz Lemon's father in "30 Rock but probably most famous for writing "Get Smart"), Heather Graham, and Ken Kesey.  What the fuck is Ken Kesey doing in this movie?  For the uninformed, Ken Kesey wrote the excellent novel and screenplay for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and his appearance in this movie as Uma Thurman's father is baffling.

The opening credits end with a dedication to River Phoenix, who died in 1993.  If I was close to Gus Van Sant and he had dedicated this piece of garbage to my memory, I'd haunt the shit out of him for the rest of his life in return.  

If any actor should have been second billed for this 90 minute waste of time, it should have been River's sister, Rain Phoenix.  I didn't know anything about Rain Phoenix prior to this movie, including whether Rain is a man or a woman.  In fact, given how little most people were actually in this movie, I thought this guy was Rain Phoenix when he first appeared on screen:

NOT Rain Phoenix

It wasn't until the real Rain Phoenix showed up moments later that I realized my error because she looks, well, exactly like her other brother, Joaquin:

NOT Joaquin Phoenix with long hair

Okay, how about a short synopsis of whatever the fuck this movie was?

Uma Thurman plays Sissy, a young woman who was born with freakishly large thumbs, which her father jokes will help her become a great hitchhiker one day.  The joke is on him though because that's exactly what she becomes as she gets older - a homeless drifter who travels back and forth across the country using her enormous thumbs to hitch rides.  Uma Thurman wears comically large prosthetics which I didn't bother taking a screenshot of.  

Better movie if she had been murdered here

She travels to New York to meet up with John Hurt playing The Countess, an eccentric gay man who runs a douche factory and for whom she used to model in ads for.  Upon her arrival, the Countess offers to set her up on a date with a young artist friend of his, Julian Gitche played by our hero, Keanu Reeves, who is apparently supposed to be 100% native American and may or may not be wearing brownface:

Native American Keanu Reeves

Sissy meets up with Julian, who is taken aback by her beauty and immediately has an asthma attack and is rendered unable to speak.  A number of his friends rush to his side to help him into a taxi and take him home.  His friend group includes many of the notable actors mentioned above - Carol Kane, Ed Bagley and Crispin Glover.  There's a brief scene back at Julian's apartment where all of his friends get to know (and attempt to rape?) Sissy, and that's the last we see of any of them.  Just another pointless scene in a completely pointless movie and the only reason I'm mentioning it is because it includes the only three minutes Keanu is in.

And that's it for Keanu Reeves, despite his near top billing on this one.  He coughs out two lines, is dragged helplessly to a taxi, and then he's gone forever from this movie.  And yet I had to endure another 70 minutes.

From there, this movie meanders with no real purpose until its conclusion.  Sissy winds up at a ranch owned by The Countess, which is run by "The Cowgirls" and their leader Bonanza Jellybean played by Rain Phoenix.  I suppose with a name like that you'd think she'd be fun or interesting, but she's really not and much like everyone else, adds nothing to this.

The Cowgirls eventually stage a violent takeover of the ranch and start getting all the whooping cranes in the United States to stop migrating and instead live on the ranch by feeding them peyote.  This eventually draws the attention of the president who sends in the army to free the cranes, or something.  Also, Pat Morita, known as "The Chink" lives on the hill next to the ranch and is supposed to be some sort of wise prophet/mystic who advises Bonanza and Sissy, or something like that.  Once again, pointless, although there is an implied sexual relationship between him and Sissy and him and Bonanza which is...weird.  

WAX OFF

The movie ends after a standoff with the army in which Bonanza is shot and killed.  Sissy leaves the ranch and gets back on the road, and nobody could give a shit including me.

If my short synopsis sounds shitty or lacking in information it's because this movie is an utter piece of trash with no direction and no point.  I read that after its initial screening and subsequent boos it received in theaters, it was shelved and heavily re-edited for a rerelease.  I can only imagine how bad the original was because this was a real slog to get through.  At least it clocked in at a cool 90 minutes and change.

I can't say I'm too surprised that I hated this as it is now the fourth or fifth Gus Van Sant movie I've endured and utterly hated, but at least this time I'm not alone, which I'll get into briefly below.

Overall, the movie has the tone of a John Waters production minus any of the heart or talent that the limited number of his films I've seen usually have.  I hated every single minute of this, including the three that Keanu was in.

A few additional notes on "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues": 

One fun thing from this project is that I am starting to recognize other actors who have randomly popped up in some of these early films.  For instance, this is the second appearance we've seen of Pat Morita (also in the made for TV piece of trash "Babes in Toyland"), the second appearance of Heather Graham who has one line in this (previously in "I Love You to Death"), the second appearance of Uma Thurman (previously in "Dangerous Liasons"), and the second appearance of two actors who I assume are Gus Van Sant favorites - Susan's mother from Seinfeld and the weird German guy from "My Own Private Idaho."  I'm sure all of these people regret their decision to appear in "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

*This movie marks the third Phoenix sibling that Keanu Reeves has appeared in a movie with - the previous two of course being River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho," and Joaquin Phoenix in "Parenthood."  I'm not sure if there are any other Phoenix siblings but after seeing Rain in this one and knowing that River is dead by this point, I really hope not.

*This was based on the novel of the same name, which was apparently pretty well regarded.  After seeing this movie, I can say conclusively that I have no interest in reading the book.

*This movie features the single worst performance by any actor in any movie I've watched for this project so far (name unknown).  This guy - 

The worst performance of 1993 goes to this guy

I would almost even recommend watching this movie just for this scene of an emergency room doctor who gives the news that the Countess is not going to wind up a vegetable after being punched in the face by Sissy.  I couldn't even find his credit on the IMDB page so I'm just going to go ahead and assume he is somehow related to Gus Van Sant because this was one of the worst on screen performances I can remember in recent memory that you just sort of have to see for yourself.

BEST PART: There is literally nothing good about this movie.

WORST PART: Take your pick: writing, acting, bad prosthetics, useless cameos, and on and on and on.

Box Office Mojo Information: $1.7 million ($3.7 million inflation adjusted) on a $8 million budget.  BOMB.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 19% Critics, 28% Audience - unlike the previous Gus Van Sant movie which had some critical acclaim despite my feelings to the contrary, it seems like nobody was a fan of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."  Probably because it was fucking terrible.

IMDB: 4.4 - still too high.

My Movie Rating: 3/10.  This was just a pointless, meandering, aimless waste of time.  The only reason I'm not giving it a lower rating is because 1s and 2s really are reserved for movies that get everything wrong.  At least Gus Van Sant is an actual filmmaker (even if I don't like his movies) with a cinematographer, an editor, and a sound guy.

Keanu Rating: 3/10.  It's a little hard to give him a rating because he really only has two lines in this movie, but even the two lines he gives are done pretty shittily.  Frankly, I'm upset that I had to watch this entire movie to learn that bit of information, otherwise I would have skipped it.  

Up next: the 1993 movie, "Little Buddha"  I've never seen this but I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll at least find it entertaining if not good.  And I'm pretty sure Keanu has more than two lines in it.  

The Keanu Reeves Project - Much Ado About Nothing

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (1993) - Don John

Ok, it took nearly twenty blog posts in this journey but I finally did it, I cheated.

Look, I've sat through a wide range of Keanu Reeves movies so far.  Some of them were new to me and downright mediocre to terrible like "My Own Private Idaho," and "The Prince of Pennsylvania."  Others were new to me and relatively enjoyable if not "good" like "The Night Before" and "Permanent Record."  And then of course there is the third category of movies I've seen dozens if not more times like "Point Break," and both "Bill and Ted" movies.  My emotions have ranged all the way from completely bored to utterly excited.

But if there's one thing I just cannot stand, other than the sound of children singing, it's the works of William Shakespeare. 

I fucking hate Shakespeare.

Fuck you

My hatred for all things Shakespeare started in 1999 during my final semester of high school.  I was never a great student and spent the majority of high school cruising through as best as I can, never particularly challenging myself in nearly anything because, you know, laziness.  I did graduate high school with a 3.5 average but that was mainly due to the fact that I never took the hardest classes available to me because that would have probably required studying and or paying attention in class which greatly interfered with my video games and not talking talking to girls habits.  

It's for this reason that I opted for mainly honor's classes rather than anything with the letters "AP" in front of them, which is how I found myself in my senior year of high school reading Hamlet instead of stuff by Chaucer or whatever the fuck they were doing over in AP English.  

I had two different English teachers in my senior year.  My teacher in the fall was an older man whose name I cannot remember, but he was approaching retirement and had all but given up on teaching, which was basically perfect for a student like me.  I feel like we did a lot more movie watching in his class than actual reading or discussing of literature and the only thing I can really remember of the fall semester was reading and then watching "The Natural," which from what I remember was a pretty decent book and not a bad Robert Redford movie.

However, come fall I wound up in the classroom of a different teacher, the notorious Dr. Viccellio, or Dr. Vick for short.  Dr. Vick had gotten her PhD in English from somewhere or another. and was downright fanatical about Shakespeare.

I don't know what the curriculum was actually supposed to be back in the spring of 1999 for seniors because the only thing Dr. Vick's classes were doing was reading Hamlet.  From what I remember, I would talk to my friends in other classes who had moved on to other books while Dr. Vick's three honor's English classes did nothing but this fucking play for an entire semester.

We would literally dissect every single fucking line from that motherfucking play.  We would read it, aloud, every day for three months, never getting through more than a handful of pages at a time.  

What does Shakespeare mean when he writes, "Where hath thine gone, Horatio?"

Uh, bitch, he means "where did you go Horatio?"

It was interminable.  And whenever a question came around to me, my answers were never good enough for her.  

"No, Jordan, what is Shakespeare really saying here?"

I.  DON'T.  CARE.  

Look, I think Dr. Vick was a perfectly capable teacher and I'm sure she was far less obnoxious in her other classes.  She even taught a few AP classes that some of my friends were in, and somehow they managed to breeze through Hamlet over the course of a few weeks, so clearly Dr. Vick wasn't some sort of incompetent maniac, but for whatever reason she shoved this goddamn play down our throats so far that I was going home every day ready to take a gigantic Shakespearean shit.  

Once we were done reading that fucking play we split into groups and all had to perform scenes from it.  

With each passing day I hated Hamlet and in turn Shakespeare more and more.  By the time I had finally graduated and escaped 12th grade English it was an inevitability that I wanted nothing to do with William Shakespeare ever again.

Even this guy isn't redeeming Shakespeare for me

So, when the film version of "Much Ado About Nothing," showed up on Keanu Reeves filmography as my next film I was....unhappy.  Not unhappy in the way that I felt going into "My Own Private Idaho" because of my dislike of Gus Van Sant, but a different kind of unhappy.  12 grade English unhappy.

So it is with my great disappointment that I have to announce that I did not make it all the way through this movie.  I tried.  I really did.  

The movie itself is shot well and features an absolutely star studded cast including Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson, Keanu Reeves and a very young Kate Beckinsale among others.  But, Shakespearean english makes my ears bleed.  I was doing my best to follow along with the plot and try to give a shit if only for the sake of this project.  But I couldn't do it.  Once I realized how unimportant Keanu Reeves was in this movie as some sort of emo villain I decided to just turn it off and never come back to it.  This was somewhere around the 45 minute mark of about a 100 minute long movie, so I made it just about halfway through.

I'm sorry.  I know all three of the people who read this blog had higher hopes for me.  I mean, I even sat through the two and a half hour long TV movie "Babes in Toyland," and I wanted to throw myself out the window for the entire duration of that one and yet, I just can't do Shakespeare.  It's where I draw the line.  

And with that, I have failed in this project, at least to some degree.  I hope this is the only movie I don't end up making it through because the point of this project is to watch everything he's in minus voiceovers and brief cameos.  I'm sorry.

Box Office Mojo Information: $36 million on a $8 million budget.   70th highest grossest movie of 1993.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 90% Critics, 86% Audience.  As mentioned above, I'm sure if you don't hate Shakespeare in the way I do, this is a perfectly fine film.  That said, fuck William Shakespeare.  

IMDB: 7.3

My Movie Rating: N/A.  Not fair for me to rank a movie I couldn't finish.  On its merits, I'm sure it is a perfectly fine film, but my judgment is far too clouded to give it a rating.

Keanu Rating: N/A.  Part of me wants to give him a 1 but that's not really fair either.

Up next: the 1993 movie, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."  Oh, well fuck me, right?  This is another Gus Van Sant movie?  I thought I was done with this guy!  I'll get through it, I promise.  

The Keanu Reeves Project - Bram Stoker's Dracula

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992) - Jonathan Harker

Long before "Twilight," "Let the Right One In," "What We Do In The Shadows," and countless other vampire stories, there was the 1897 novel, Dracula by Bram Stoker, and it only took almost 100 years for it to become the latest movie I watched for the Keanu Reeves Project.

Given that I'd never seen this movie and all I really knew about it going in was that Keanu Reeves is supposed to give a horrendous performance, I had little to no expectations and boy was I not disappointed.  

We as a society went through a prolonged vampire craze in the mid to late 00's which really, never ended but certainly hit a peak somewhere between five to seven years ago.  There were tons of vampire movies during this period: the Twilight Saga," The Underworld series," Dark Shadows," "30 Days of Night," "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," and so, so many more.  There were enough of these films that even an incredibly shitty vampire spoof movie, "Vampires Suck," was released in 2010 and while I've never seen it, I can pretty much guarantee that this movie, indeed, sucks.

Not to get too off track here, but I blame the Waynes Brothers for the never-ending torrent of abysmal spoof movies that were released around 2005 - 2012.  "Scary Movie" was far too funny for its own good and in my opinion is the reason that we were later subjected to things like "Disaster Movie," "Meet the Spartans," and "Epic Movie."  If you've seen any of these films and find them funny you should do us all a favor and jump off your favorite bridge.

But I digress.

There have been, of course, plenty of "Dracula" adaptations over the years, but the 1992 movie, "Bram Stoker's Dracula," is one of the only ones to truly stay the course of the novel, or at least from the ten minutes of research I did prior to writing this.

And after sitting through the nearly two and a half hours of this movie, it's a bit of no surprise that many of the adaptations strayed off script.  This movie is just really weird.  And boring.  

The story meanders a bit but the general gist is that a barrister had visited Dracula and returned to London completely crazy and was confined to an insane asylum.  In the opening minutes of the movie (after a flashback to the 1400s where we meet a young Dracula and his wife), the replacement barrister Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is sent to Transylvania to secure a land deal with the very odd Dracula.  Upon his arrival, Dracula notices from a photograph that Harker's very lovely fiance Mina (Wynona Ryder) is the spitting image of his long-dead wife.

"I uh...love what you've done with the place."

Rather than secure the land deal, which by the way I still don't understand, Dracula instead imprisons Harker in his castle and sets off to find and seduce Mina so he can give her eternal life and stay with her forever.  Or something.

To be honest, I kept getting lost in the incredibly strange imagery and odd decisions that Francis Ford Coppola took time and time again in this movie.  Wait, Francis Ford Coppola?  Yes, that's right.  Hard to believe that the same person who made "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now" also directed "Bram Stoker's Dracula."  

Eventually, Dracula seduces Mina's friend Lucy while transformed as a wolfman and infects her with his vampire blood.  I guess this is such a turn-on to Mina that she also falls in love with Dracula and decides to let him turn her into a vampire too.  Or something.  I really had a hard time following what was going on for many parts of this movie.

Just a little wolf on woman bestiality

The strongest performance, by far, is given by Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing who had at least a handful of funny moments whether intentional or not.  After Lucy is infected and starts to go completely mad, Van Helsing arrives on the spot to diagnose her as infected with vampire blood and despite not being able to save her life, does do a pretty good job at killing the undead version of her.

You're not supposed to see me before the wedding!

In the end, Van Helsing and his determined group of followers track Dracula down and nearly kill him before Mina finishes him off.

I...did not like this movie although I definitely learned a lot about the classic version of Dracula that I didn't know before.  For instance, Dracula can basically turn into any form he wants - young Dracula, a pack of rats, green mist, a terrifying demon.  There are basically no bounds to what he can be.  Maybe this will give me a better appreciation for the next episode of "What We Do in the Shadows," which unlike this movie, is spectacular in every way possible.

Just a few other quick thoughts before wrapping this up:

*I came into this expecting a terrible performance by Keanu Reeves and while he's certainly not good in this, he's far less worse than I was expecting.  

*Aside from Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman is pretty fucking great in this movie and is genuinely terrifying.  He's another actor I wouldn't mind doing a full filmography watch when I'm done with this one.  I don't think I actually know what Gary Oldman looks like in real life because I think he takes his movie roles based on how absolutely insane makeup artists often make him look:

Fuckable

Totally fuckable

Super fuckable

So yeah, that's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," a movie I'll never watch again and forget about entirely by tomorrow.

BEST PART: Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman are both pretty good in this, particularly Hopkins.  He adds some pretty fun comedic parts to an otherwise dreary movie.

WORST PART: Pacing?  Keanu's accent?

Box Office Mojo Information: $216 million on a $40 million budget.  Holy shit, I'd call that a major box office success, the 12th highest grossing movie of 1992.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 71% Critics, 79% Audience - these both seem entirely too high to me.  

IMDB: 7.4

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  Was this a horror movie?  I really don't know, but it was far more weird than scary.  Aside by the really outstanding performances by Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman, this is just not a good movie.  

Keanu Rating: 5/10.  Look, he's not good in this but I also think my expectations of him were so unbelievable low that he had nowhere to go but up for me.  

Up next: the 1992 movie, "Much Ado About Nothing."  I hate Shakespeare and so I'm going to go ahead and guess that I'm not going to enjoy this.  

The Keanu Reeves Project: My Own Private Idaho

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991) - Scott Favor

Welcome back to the Keanu Reeves project, an on-going movie watching project where I'm sitting down and watching Keanu Reeves' entire filmography from start to finish.  Why am I doing this?

Well, everything is closed due to COVID19, and even though it's not like I'm frequently out partying on the town, I've found myself with more free time than normal.  Also, I love Keanu Reeves, which you can read more about in my previous posts and despite my long-time fandom that dates back to 1989, he has quite an extensive filmography full of movies I've never actually seen.

So, even though I've got a Google Sheet with over 100 movies I plan on watching one day, I've resigned myself to watching (and rewatching) approximately 80 movies that in some way, shape, or form feature Keanu Reeves.  This can lead to some interesting and new experiences of movies I've never heard of, like my first ever viewing of Permanent Record, and it can also lead me down roads I've chosen not to take before for any given reason, like disliking the filmmaker in this post about "My Own Private Idaho," Gus Van Sant.

I've only seen a handful of Gus Van Sant films and now that I've watched "My Own Private Idaho" I think I can safely say that I don't need to see anymore.  I watched "Good Will Hunting" against my will as an assignment for a college "class" I had to take my freshman year which probably colored my views on the movie and while I barely remember it, I don't need to see it ever again.  

That summer, while working at a video store (that's a thing that used to exist and one of the best jobs I ever had), my friend Russell and I watched an earlier Van Sant movie called "Drugstore Cowboy," another movie that I've completely forgotten so it clearly left no mark on me.  And for some reason, I also once rented "Elephant," which is less of a movie and more of an art piece about the Columbine shooting.  I am appalled by its 73% Rotten Tomatoes score.  

Based on this picture, you'd think this movie might be interesting or even good.  You'd be wrong.

So it was with a minor sense of dread that I sat down and watched the 1991 movie, "My Own Private Idaho," starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix as a pair of street hustlers willing to have sex with just about anyone if the price is right.  

Very loosely based on the Shakespeare play "Henry IV," the movie follows the travels of Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves) as they go between Idaho, Portland, Seattle, and even Rome as they search for Mike's long-lost mother.

Getting some grub after a night spent running a train on Susan's mother from Seinfeld.  No really, that happens in the first 10 minutes.

Look, I'm not an arthouse cinema guy.  I can appreciate a good artsy movie but there's a reason I hated "Elephant" and a reason why I'll never watch the Brad Pitt movie, "The Tree of Life," even though Brad Pitt is my second favorite actor after Keanu.  This shit is just not for me.

I just felt...bored for a good chunk of "Idaho."  It was hard finding any sympathy for the two main characters, particularly Keanu as we find out he's a trust fund baby who hangs around all of these street people, killing time until he turns 21 and inherits a big chunk of money.  Mike, at least, suffers from narcolepsy which often puts him in very dangerous positions particularly as he makes money by having sex with random men he meets on the street for money.  He's also in love with Scott even though Scott claims to really only be gay for pay, which again, makes little to no sense to me since when we meet him he's about a week away from becoming rich.

Not even gonna touch this one.

The pair spend most of the movie aimlessly wandering around from city to city, interacting with all of the street rats they seem to know, including Bob, an older, wiser (?) street person who seemingly taught the two of them the ropes when they got started.  I couldn't help but be distracted both by the fact that Bob looked way too much like Tommy Wiseau as well as the fact that the movie often and for no seemingly clear reason continuously jumped back and forth from regular language to Shakespeare-esque.

The most entertaining street rat

There are just too many odd choices in this movie for me to appreciate it.  For example, there are two sex scenes that are shot in a montage of stills, except they're not actually stills as you can see the actors breathing or blinking.  It reminded me far too much of Arrested Development and while it might have worked for some viewers, I absolutely hated it.

Imagine this, except with less clothes and having sex with other men and women

A few other observations just to note - 

Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is in several scenes as Bob's buddy and another street person.  He's actually pretty good and oddly, this makes the second movie of the last three that had a member of RHCP in it (as you'll recall, Anthony Kiedis had a small role in "Point Break").  Just something to keep in mind should you find yourself in a rousing game of Keanu Reeves Trivia.  It's still TBD if any other members show up in later films but I could definitely see Dave Navarro fitting in perfectly in Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Also, both Keanu and Will Ferrell were in the "Between Two Ferns" movie and as we all know, Will Ferrell and Chad Smith are the same person.

Come on McFly, what are you, chicken?

This is the first film that featured Keanu on a full-on motorcycle.  He rides around in a fancy scooter a bunch in the very forgettable "Prince of Pennsylvania" but unless I missed something, this was the first true motorcycle on film for him.  Very exciting.

Way more fun in John Wick 3

Toward the back half of the movie Scott and Mike head to Rome in search of Mike's mother (they never find her).  This really annoyed me - Scott clearly comes from money so it wouldn't surprise me for him to have a passport and the ability to travel.  But Mike has been a street person for what is implied to have been at least a few years, he has no fixed address and no money.  How'd this dude get a passport on short notice?  Plus they travel from Seattle to Rome with no luggage.  Even pre-9/11 that's gotta raise some red flags for someone, right?

Thankfully, this is the last Gus Van Sant movie I'm ever going to watch.

BEST PART: Good enough performances by Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix.

WORST PART: How fucking boring this is.  All of the unnecessary Shakesperian dialogue.  

Box Office Mojo Information: $6.4 million/$13.8 million inflation adjusted, 128th highest grossing movie of 1991 on a $2.5 million budget.

Rotten Tomatoes: 81% Critics, 80% Audience - honestly, this doesn't particularly surprise me.  Maybe it's not a bad movie, but it's just not for me.

IMDB: 7.1

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  I was mostly just bored for long stretches of this and constantly taken out of it every time they fell into and subsequently abandoned the Shakespearean dialogue.  The more artsy parts of the movie, like the dream sequences Mike's character has when he has a narcolepsy spell and the bizarre sex scenes just didn't do it for me.  

Keanu Rating: 6/10.  Keanu is totally fine in this but River Phoenix gives a much stronger overall performance.  As many of us know, Keanu was very good friends with River Phoenix and even drove across the country to hand deliver this script.  Just one of the several tragedies that Keanu Reeves has been through in his life.  

Up next: Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Oh boy.  I've never seen this one either but this is one of the movies used by Keanu haters as evidence of what a "bad" actor he is.  Hoping this is so bad it's good!