Keanu Reeves and Jonah Hill in ‘Outcome’ —Courtesy of Apple TV
Of all the movie stars you’d expect to suffer an existential crisis, Keanu Reeves—chill, well adjusted, adorable—would be last in line. He’s clearly playing against type in Jonah Hill’s painfully unfunny Apple TV movie Outcome, as a superstar nervously staging a post-drug-rehabilitation comeback and worried that, in his absence, the public has turned against him. Reeves’ presence in any movie tends to be a sort of salve; even with bad material, he generally coasts by on his laid-back radiance. But not even Reeves can put an adequate shine on Outcome, a satire that takes one spindly premise and grinds it down to a nub.
Reeves’ Reef Hawk, we’re told at the beginning of the film, is the biggest and most beloved film star in the world, but having recently kicked a heroin habit, he’s been out of the public eye for too long. Nervous about re-entry, he clings to his two oldest friends from high school, Kyle (Cameron Diaz, saddled with idiotic dialogue that’s beneath her) and Xander (Matt Bomer, wasted as a cartoon airhead). They pump him with false confidence, though it may just be enough to get him through. Not so fast: Reef gets a call from his fixer, the wheeler-dealer lawyer Ira Slitz, played by Hill, who informs him that an unidentified someone has gained possession of a Reef Hawk sex tape, which will be released to the public unless the star ponies up a huge chunk of money. Ira instructs Reef on everything he must do to make this problem go away, beginning with apologizing to anyone he may have wronged in the past.
Reef has no memory of ever having had sex on camera, and he can’t think of anyone who’d hate him enough to launch such incriminating evidence into the world. Then again, there’s a lot that, as a recovering addict, he can’t remember from his darkest days. He begins a frantic search to locate and apologize to anyone he may have hurt, from his self-centered reality-star mother (Susan Lucci), to his old girlfriend (Welker White), who informs him outright that he’s simply not a good person, to his former manager (Martin Scorsese, in a cameo that almost manages to be affecting), who was unceremoniously kicked to the curb long ago. Reef listens to each story intently and earnestly; as Reef, Reeves is so straightforward, so sympathetic, that he undermines whatever is supposed to be funny about Outcome. There’s no way you can believe that Reef, embodied by Keanu, could ever be that much of a jerk.
Keanu Reeves and Martin Scorsese
Meanwhile, Hill grabs more than his share of the spotlight, steamrolling through every scene he’s in—and he’s in way too many. In an early moment, Ira shows up at Reef’s glamorous beachside house to discuss a crisis-management strategy, only to realize he needs to take a dump. He conducts the rest of the meeting from the can, and when Reef’s smart-alecky assistant, played by Ivy Wolk, is summoned to bring a softer roll of toilet paper than the one that’s been provided, she comments evocatively on the aroma filling the room. Who writes stuff like this? The culprits are Hill and Ezra Woods, and even if the rest of the gags in Outcome are less crass, there’s still little that’s funny about them.
As a director, Hill has almost zero control over the movie’s tone: it veers from crude wisecracking to wide-eyed solemnity from one minute to the next. The message seems to be that Hollywood is a terrible place where people do awful things to one another, while also raking in lots of money. That’s believable enough, even if we’ve heard it all before. But then there’s Reeves’ face, aglow with humility. He does a terrible job at playing a self-involved character who may have built a career by steamrollering over friends, family, and acquaintances. Even in a movie this bad, Reeves doesn’t disappoint, but he may not be enough to get you through Outcome. It’s scratchy TP in movie form.
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