'Keanu': Key and Peele's action comedy a bit of a letdown

Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key ended their brilliant Comedy Central sketch comedy show, Key & Peele, last year after three years to focus on new endeavors, both together and apart. While devastating for a fan - I was a diehard - it was also exciting. They are such fresh, sharp, and funny voices that I'm down for any new medium they want to try their hands at.

Perhaps that's why Keanu, their first foray starring in feature films, feels like such a letdown. It's a comedy that has its moments, but it can't sustain the energy and buzz that crackled throughout their sketch show.

Written by Peele and Key & Peele alum Alex Rubens, Keanu is about the theft of an adorable kitten by a gang of drug dealers, and the attempt to get it back.

The feline focus makes the movie seem like it was written for the Internet age. But in a lot of ways, Keanu hearkens back to movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, action movies with a sense of humor.

It's smarter than those movies because Peele and Rubens seem less concerned with getting a joke onto every page of the screenplay and more concerned with the transformation of the duo at the story's center.

Key and Peele play Clarence and Rell, nerdy cousins - "You sound like Richard Pryor doing an impression of a white guy," Rell tells Clarence - who have an argument about whose childhood neighborhood was harder, based on who got beat up the most.

Rell is distraught after a breakup but finds solace in Keanu, a stray kitten that formerly belonged to a fierce drug dealer. When the kitten is kidnapped by another group of toughs - led by the menacing Cheddar (Method Man) - Rell and Clarence decide to go undercover as their own sort of gangster in order to get Keanu back.

The movie is about how we code-switch to fit in when we're in different situations and around different people, and how that can be fun - although in the case of Keanu, it's somewhat deadly as well.

But Keanu doesn't go far enough. Key & Peele was searing and incisive about race and American culture, and Keanu doesn't even scratch the surface.

It's occasionally funny - there are two great cameos by very game performers, one in voice only, and Key and Peele remain an incomparable comedic duo.

But after five glorious seasons of Key & Peele, I know what their first movie could have been.

Not even a cute cat can change that.

meichel@phillynews.com
215-854-5909

Keanu

Directed by Jeremy Saulnier. With Joe Cole, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Patrick Stewart, and Anton Yelchin. Distributed by A24.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 mins.

Parent's guide: R (intense violence, profanity, adult themes).

Playing at: Area theaters.