The Keanu Reeves Project: Tune in Tomorrow...

TUNE IN TOMORROW....(1990)- Martin

For whatever reason, some movies get lost to time.  They come out, a handful of people see them, and then society as a whole forgets they ever existed.  They never air on any channel on television, nobody ever talks about them and you can't even find them to stream on literally any service.  Tune in Tomorrow, starring Peter Falk, Keanu Reeves and Barbara Hershey is one of these movies.

I spent about 20 minutes trying to track down Tune in Tomorrow, a movie that I'm sure you and nobody you know has ever even heard of, before eventually finding it uploaded in seven parts on Youtube.  I suppose I should have looked there first.

The movie takes place in the early 1950's, where Peter Falk plays Pedro Carmichael, a writer of serialized radio programs with a penchant for dressing in costumes and making jokes at the expense of....Albanians?  Yes, Albanians.

Somehow, not a horror movie.

Keanu Reeves plays Martin, an up-and-coming radio newsman, who also happens to fall in love with his 36 year old aunt Julia (NOT blood related we come to learn).  After burning bridges at a radio station in Detroit by apparently pissing off the wrong group of Alaskans, Pedro shows up in New Orleans ready to start his new radio show.

The movie features a lot of cuts to a story within a story as Pedro's radio program is acted out by a slew of other actors including 80's TV icon John Larroquette.  We come to learn that Pedro's stories are often inspired by if not completely stolen from his real life interactions, as we see him constantly spying on Martin and using his interactions with Julia to incorporate them into his radio show.

There is a significant plot hole here worth mentioning, in that Pedro's radio program features on a well-to-do southern family where a young man falls in love with and wants to marry his...sister.  The incest story line is supposed to be borrowed from Martin's own relationship with his Aunt Julia, except Pedro doesn't even learn of their relationship until after he's already starting writing the incest storyline into his own show.  Why so much incest?  I don't know.  Thankfully, towards the end of the movie we discover that the fictional brother and sister aren't even related but by this point of Tune in Tomorrow, who could really care.

I was once berated at a Halloween party for wearing the same outfit but when Peter Falk does it it's all gravy, baby

There are countless jokes at the expense of Albanians so eventually, all the Albanians in New Orleans start getting pissed off and start to picket the radio station, eventually setting it on fire towards the close of the movie.

None of this really matters of course, as Pedro plans on skipping town again.  Apparently he doesn't really have anything against Albanians, or Alaskans for that matter, he just likes to rile up trouble in whatever city he happens to be working.  It's all pretty stupid.

50's Keanu

I guess this movie is supposed to be a comedy based on a handful of IMDB reviews I read but the only thing I found funny was Keanu's supposed Cajun accent.  More on this momentarily.

Overall, I think there's a reason this movie has been forgotten by time.  The only thing that might be considered notable about this movie was the opening credits as they are done in a way I've never seen before.  In keeping with the radio show motif, the opening credits are read aloud by a radio performer, it took me a second to realize this until I literally heard a voice saying that the movie co-stars Keanu Reeves and Barbara Hershey.  I don't know if it worked or not as gag but it was certainly unique in its execution.

BEST PART: I mean, this isn't a good movie, so even though it was super weird, I'm going to go with the weird way they did the opening credits.

WORST PART: Peter Falk dressed up as a French maid.  This is what nightmares are made of.

Box Office Mojo information: $1.8 Million (169th movie of 1990 on an 11 million dollar budget - ouch

Rotten Tomatoes: 50% Critics, 52% Audience

IMDB: 6.2

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  Other than those weird opening credits, there's literally no reason to watch this one unless you're a huge Peter Falk fan and like seeing him act like a goof.  

Keanu Rating: 3/10.  I'm just going to get this out of the way now because it's going to come up again in at least two future movies I can think of: Keanu should not be asked to do accent work.  In Tune in Tomorrow his cajun accent comes and goes scene to scene and when it's on it's....weird.  I am not looking forward to a repeat of this when I get to The Devil's Advocate, a movie I'm already dreading having to rewatch.  And though I've not seen it before, I think his English accent in Bram Stoker's Dracular is notorious for its dreadfulness.  All that said, he did have good on-screen chemistry with Barbara Hershey as Aunt Julia but even the die-hardest of Keanu Reeves can skip this movie.  

Up next:  The 1991 movie Providence.  Nope, never heard of this one either.