April 17, 2007
Key-an-oooooh Baby!
A Retrospective
Keanu Reeves is an actor everyone loves to pig-pile on. Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese devotes an entire chapter to the man, arguing that Reeves is not the sort to be acting in our movies; rather, he ought to be renting us skis.
Maybe since The Matrix, this has been fair game. But there once was a time when Keanu was humbly resigned to his unactorly status ("When I was fifteen, I told my mom I wanted to be an actor. I don't know why." Neither do we). When even he himself could admit, "You've got smart people, you've got dumb people. I'm a meathead." A time when Keanu knew he was not too cool to drool.
Nowhere else was Keanu's skill (or skill at having lack of skill - I think its a zen thing) on display than Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, a Charlie Kaufman-esque teen comedy in a time before Charlie Kaufman, before Dude... Where's My Car? drove the dude genre out of High Comedy heaven into the dumbshit ditch, never to return. "Just like some people are remembered for playing Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet)," Keanu could say, "when my life is over I'll be remembered for playing Ted." If only that were still true. If only.
Imagine Keanu - our Keanu - tilting his head back, sweeping hair out of one eye only to have it fall into the next, as he emphasizes his statements: "Jam!" Or his existential observations: "I'm twenty-seven and dying." O Keanu - how we wish you could have stayed twenty-seven forever. Young. Vicious. Tough. A want-to-be gangster - no Matrix messiah, and we loved him for it.
Well, now you may relive your favorite Golden Age Reeves moments, as Lucid Screening lovingly recreates this two page spread not seen since the November 1991 edition of Seventeen magazine. Enjoy.
Page one:
Page two:
Comments
Ben said...
Bravo! My only concern is your having forgotten to mention Reeves' power house performance in Point Break, a straight up masterpiece.
Posted by: Ben | April 17, 2007 10:22 AM
Andrew said...
Perhaps, as you say, Point Break is a masterpiece; but you must also admit that it was a dangerous film in the Reeves oeuvre, because it began to set the precedent (later confirmed by Speed, Chain Reaction, and The Matrix) that Keanu was an action hero with chops in crisis situations.
I prefer the Keanu who experiences the responsibilities of daily life as a crisis situation.
Or perhaps my partiality to Ted is disallowing me from remaining objective on this matter.
Posted by: Andrew | April 17, 2007 4:38 PM
Ben said...
Perhaps you are correct but I feel that becoming unstuck in time as he did in BaTEA counts as a major crises and his irresponsible manipulations of the space time continuum set a precedent for future dangerous films such The Lake House.
Posted by: Ben | April 17, 2007 7:41 PM