as many of you know by now, I've moved to the Bay Area; as many of you also know by now, I am watching every movie Keanu Reeves has ever made. I am far from the first person to do this and I'm certainly not alone in having devoted a not-insignificant chunk of 2019 to the endeavor. (and I mean 2019 specifically: I did not want to use the neologism variously spelled "Keanussance" or "Keanaissance" in this post, but it's unavoidable as what the Internet's termed this summer. incidentally, I did find "Reevesnaissance" in
a semi-obscure 2017 listicle — used in reference to 2014 onwards, and then again in a couple of tweets referring to 2019 — but it never really caught on, I guess.)
what's refreshing about Keanu, and what's made this whole undertaking rather rewarding so far (despite the number of almost-but-not-quite-good movies I've made myself sit through) is that he's always, you know, very Keanu. what I mean by that is: there's a little bit of almost every Keanu character in almost every other Keanu character. even when he's playing about as against type as he's ever played in
My Own Private Idaho (1991), as (what Gus Van Sant meant to be) the Prince Hal of the Pacific Northwest — the very rich, occasionally cruel, and aptly named Scott Favor — he finds it in his character to shove a bunch of sandwiches in a groggy River Phoenix's face, and it works. "look, Mike!" he says, far more cheerfully than any other character says any other line of dialogue in this film. "SANDWICHES!"
(sadly, I can't find a clip of this, so you'll just have to watch the whole movie — the real star of which is not Keanu but River Phoenix.
here's the most heartbreaking scene.)
"SANDWICHES!" you can hear Ted Logan (
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, 1989) saying it, you can hear Neo (
The Matrix, duh, 1999) saying it, you can hear Matt (
River's Edge, 1986) saying it. you can hear Bob Arctor (
A Scanner Darkly, 2004) saying it, although maybe he's not referring to actual sandwiches. you can even hear Donaka (
Man of Tai Chi, 2013) saying it with a more sinister inflection. we might imagine that John Wick (uh,
John Wick, 2014) said it before his wife died. Julian (
Something's Gotta Give, 2003) probably said it to Diane Keaton's character, just as Chris (
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, 2009) probably said it to Robin Wright's character. if you ask me, Johnny Utah's
"I AM AN EFF BEE EYE AGENT" line (
Point Break, 1991) is contained somewhere in there, too, and of course the
"I WANT ROOM SERVICE!" speech (
Johnny Mnemonic, 1995)
has the same energy — or the same lack of energy, really, the weirdly disarming stoner simplicity. perhaps this is why people have always said that Keanu's a bad actor; although it should be said that of late these "people" have disappeared into the woodworks or maybe they've just changed their minds. I was one of them when I first watched
The Matrix, nearly a decade ago
. a quick Facebook Messenger search for the film has me telling a friend that it's "such a good movie BUT Keanu's a bad actor." I wonder how much of my own opinion — and everyone else's opinion — of Keanu's acting was shaped by other people saying he was a bad actor, like, as a meme? because of his awful English accent (
Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1994), because of his nearly-as-bad Southern accent (
The Devil's Advocate, 1997)? because of whatever on Earth was going on with his character in
Much Ado About Nothing (1993)? my Messenger search unfortunately turns up nothing that might either prove or disprove any of this; all I know is that I had no idea what "good acting" meant when I was 13.
I leave you with
this scene from
Johnny Mnemonic, in which Keanu (as the titular Johnny) accesses THE INTERNET in 2021!!!
