Jonah Hill has been a movie star for roughly 20 years, and Keanu Reeves, the lead of Hill’s new directorial effort, “Outcome,” has been famous for about double that. They’re both aware of what it means to be an actor in the spotlight and how the internet has changed the relationship between famous people and their fans. However, what’s meant to be crucible of public reaction leading to personal redemption rings hollow and false in this satire.
A subject as slippery as “cancellation” needs a firm grip, and Hill, who came in for his own public criticism a few years ago, seems to have little worth saying on the matter other than celebrities are as imperfect as anyone else. The lack of specificity makes “Outcome” painfully broad both thematically and comically where it seems more like a collection of half-sketched ideas of Hollywood life rather than anything substantive about the unique social relationships formed by fame.
Reef Hawk (Reeves), a two-time Oscar-winning actor and lead of three major franchises, is about to mount a comeback after a five-year absence where he was secretly dealing with heroin addiction. But before he can even start the ball rolling on his resurgence, word of an incriminating video tape reaches Reef’s manager Ira (Hill). Reef, trying to get ahead of the damage, starts going back through his life and wondering who’s looking for payback. As he reconnects with old relationships, he sees he’s hurt a lot of people, and yet that leads more to an understanding of his loneliness rather than getting any closer to the identity of his blackmailer.
Hill and co-writer Ezra Woods seem to want to tell two stories here. One is about the private lives of mega movie stars, something akin to last year’s “Jay Kelly.” But whereas Noah Baumbach’s movie was willing to interrogate the selfishness and isolation that a life of stardom provides, Reef feels like a stranger in his own life. He comes off as politely oblivious, knowing that he’s hurt people, but without the actions to give these scenes much depth. The film gets into a pattern of Reef going to talk to someone from earlier in his life, they explain how he hurt them, and that’s about it. On the one hand, you may get a nice scene like Martin Scorsese playing Reef’s childhood manager, but it doesn’t do much to illuminate or change Reef, who plays like a quiet cipher for most of the movie.
For a character who was supposedly loathsome to countless people in his life and whose drug addiction was painful to his lifelong friends Kyle (Cameron Diaz) and Xander (Matt Bomer), Reef largely comes off as passive and subdued. If Reeves was looking to skewer his nice-guy image, he already did that in “Always Be My Maybe,” and seems reluctant to provide a more dramatic take on the obnoxious star. If Reef was ever a monster (and we’re told that he was), we don’t get to see it. Instead, he’s a character being told about his life rather than allowing the audience to witness that behavior. Perhaps the writers intended to mirror how scandal is often heard but rarely seen, but the approach still renders their protagonist as largely inert.
The other story from Hill and Woods is about cancel culture, where the jokes largely come from Ira and a team of crisis PR flacks he assembles. But everything here is so pointed and insular that it fails to get much of a laugh. Is it hard to be a celebrity in the age of social media? Sure, but celebrity crisis has always been an element of Hollywood. The fact that publicists and managers are now in conflict with individuals rather than outlets doesn’t change how fame remains fickle.
“Outcome” isn’t necessarily wrong that what’s deemed offensive sometimes seems arbitrary and that there are no rules for why one “canceled” performer is allowed to return while another must live in ignominy, but it’s tough to care about celebrity egos even in the best of times.
To the film’s credit, its larger vision is about Reef’s renewal, but ultimately, whether famous people remain famous is just far too narrow a conceit unless it’s fodder for wicked satire. Sadly, Hill’s bite here (despite his characters’ massive fake chompers) is far too tame to poke fun at celebrity anxieties.
Although there’s a meta-aspect of both Hill and Reeves making a movie about public perceptions, “Outcome” restates what’s been said countless times about Hollywood and said far better.
Hill has assembled an impressive cast, but with a few minor exceptions (the aforementioned Scorsese, Susan Lucci playing Reef’s mother), no one gets a chance to shine or challenge the audience to think differently about celebrity. Hill and Reeves have well-established star personas, and yet “Outcome,” has so little to say that it appears destined to be one of their most forgettable features.
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