'Outcome' Review: Keanu Reeves in Jonah Hill's Hollywood Satire
Keanu Reeves (left) and Jonah Hill in 'Outcome.'
Courtesy of Apple TV
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If Jonah Hill’s second narrative feature behind the camera serves any purpose at all, it’s to make the spiraling self-indulgence of Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly seem like a Via Dolorosa of profound soul-searching. Outcome watches another sad, rich movie star unravel — this time it’s Keanu Reeves as a beloved Hollywood figure emerging from a five-year career hiatus to be confronted with an extortion threat involving a compromising video from his past. Reeves’ introspective humility comes close to poignancy at times, but everyone else is in a different movie — one that would likely never have been made without Hill’s name on the script.
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It’s not my job to worry about Apple TV and other streamers dumping millions into original features with the shelf life of scallops. But the assembly of talent here seems a criminal waste on material that’s like a weak subplot on The Studio. Even the comfort-food pleasures of glossy entertainment are scarce in visuals awash with garish colors and uncomfortably tight closeups that leave you wondering what’s up with one actor’s ear, another’s mouth or another’s alien face work. What? It’s not like I’m naming names!
Outcome
The Bottom Line
Decidedly meager.
Release date: Friday, April 10 (Apple TV)
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Jonah Hill, Cameron Diaz, Matt Bomer, Susan Lucci, Laverne Cox, David Spade, Martin Scorsese, Atsuko Okatsuka, Roy Wood Jr., Welker White, Kaia Gerber, Ivy Wolk, Drew Barrymore
Director: Jonah Hill
Screenwriters: Jonah Hill, Ezra Woods
Rated R,
1 hour 24 minutes
Reeves plays Reef Hawk, which is a gay porn name if ever there was one. He was discovered as a kid in a TV song-and-dance contest and went on to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, landing two Oscars before taking a break away from the spotlight. Thanks to his protective lifelong besties Kyle (Cameron Diaz) and Xander (Matt Bomer), and his fast-talking crisis management lawyer Ira Slitz (Hill), the public knows nothing about Reef’s former heroin habit.
But when Ira gets word that a cancel-caliber video has surfaced and is in the hands of someone asking for a large sum to make it disappear, the lawyer sends Reef on a mission to ask forgiveness of everyone with reason to hate him and try to sniff out who has the tape. Reef can think of no one who would bear him ill will, but his sassy assistant Sammy (Ivy Wolk) weighs in with a very long list.
Ira delivers those instructions while taking a dump in a broad-comedy scene that goes on for an agonizingly long time — though it’s nothing compared to him riffing on semen a little later. A nod or two to Weekend at Bernie’s is a fair indication of what Hill and co-writer Ezra Woods find funny. Diaz’s Kyle is possibly being ironic when she squeals, “I love outlandish humor with my friends!” But that doesn’t make the jokes any sharper.
The recipients of Reef’s apologies include his mother, Dinah (Susan Lucci), who only agrees to listen if it can be filmed for an episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Dinah makes a more credible monster of self-absorption than Reef is accused of being before he got clean. It’s Keanu, for God’s sake! Can you really imagine him ever being an insensitive diva with anyone? But his ex-girlfriend, Savannah (Welker White), gives it to him straight: “You’re not a good person, it was always about you.”
Even his nearest and dearest, Kyle and Xander, reveal during a sunset-dappled heart-to-heart on the deck of his beachfront Malibu bungalow that he hurt them too. But the script never digs deep enough into meaningful specifics to make it interesting.
The best scenes are with Martin Scorsese as Reef’s childhood talent manager Richie “Red” Rodriguez, still conducting business out of an amusement arcade bowling alley and looking back with deep melancholy at all the kids who moved on to bigger management firms and promptly forgot him. A bookend scene toward the end in which Reef contacts him out of the blue is arguably the only genuinely affecting moment in the film.
As the extortionist’s threat grows more pressing, Ira assembles a crack team of specialists to help with damage control, even if it’s unclear to Reef how the