Maybe the Wachowskis did thousands of takes. I still cringe at "I'll give you the finger and you give me my phone call" but the rest of the movie he's pretty tolerable.
Laga is me
The Matrix and Speed were the only two films I can think of where I actually enjoyed watching Keanu be Keanu, but in action mode
The first time I watched Speed was during a school trip on a chartered Greyhound Bus. The watching-while-riding experience was awesome. At one point we pulled over at a rest stop, I hadn't noticed and I had a knee-jerk type reaction when the bus stopped. Great combo.
Keanu is OK when he does not talk. He should play nothing but mutes. Or people who speak imaginary languages. It would have been an OK junk movie if Keanu had not kept speaking. He can't deliver a line decently.
Keanu is OK when he does not talk. He should play nothing but mutes. Or people who speak imaginary languages. It would have been an OK junk movie if Keanu had not kept speaking. He can't deliver a line decently.
The bummer part is that the last part is not true! Okay, so he can't NOW, but I rewatched River's Edge a couple years ago, just before I canceled cable, and holy fuck, he could, like vary his pitch and shit! No monotone! He was really good in it. Actually, I think he was the best of all the actors in it, and that's saying something.
Suddenly, I remembered why people used to be so excited by him!
I think I sort of liked Keanu in Johnny Mnemonic, but it might have just been that his performance was thrown into sharp contrast against Coppola's Dracula around the same time.
Constantine is totally worth seeing for Djimon Hounsou and Tilda Swinton though. Even if you factor in Shia LaBoeuf as the most annoying sidekick since Short Round.
Keanu is very natural in River's Edge, as Ple notes. Like the stoner Hawaiian kid he was.
Aw. "You're just here to fuck my mother and eat my food. Motherfucker! Foodeater!"
When we saw Johnny Mnemonic (at the dollar theater) at some point a character screams "Motherfucker" and two of us shouted "Foodeater!" in automatic response. Which I think confused the other people in the theater. Both of them.
Keanu is OK when he does not talk. He should play nothing but mutes. Or people who speak imaginary languages. It would have been an OK junk movie if Keanu had not kept speaking. He can't deliver a line decently.
OK this is fucking funny because truth be told I did once have a crush on Keanu Reeves mostly because of Rupert Marchetta in
The Prince of Pennsylvania.
My future ex husband was well aware of said crush when we went to see
Much Ado About Nothing.
I had no idea Keanu was in it and said as much when FEH glared at me accusingly during the opening credits.
Listen, I said, I am so over this guy. I mean he's cute and all and he's a pretty decent physical actor but when it comes to speaking he really is just not very good at it. My FEH agreed and then we realized with horror that we were about to watch Keanu Reeves do Shakespeare.
The rest of the audience may have been quite annoyed when Keanu rode up on his horsie, dismounted and said, "I am a man of few words," and FEH and I exclaimed, "WOOHOO!"
On its own merits,ignoring its source, is it a good movie?
NobutIlikeitanyway.
I can distance myself and see everything about it that's utter crap, I really can. But there's my Keanu problem, see, and Tilda Swinton being so awesome, and the whole faux-epic feel of the Good-v-Evil thing and...yeah. Sometimes I am just that easy.
I seem to remember enjoying Keanu in My Own Private Idaho. On the other hand, it was years ago and I don't know what I would think of it now.
Keanu does have extensive Shakespeare training. I liked him in Point Break, and we know all about my unreasonable and unholy love for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (in which he's playing himself, more or less).
