Keanu is a black comedy, of sorts, but at its heart is a buddy comedy.

The film starts at an illegal drug lab. Two men bust in, and kill everyone. The leader of the factory tries to escape, with his new kitten.  He is not so fortunate, but the kitten gets out.

Rell Williams (Jordan Peele) is a man who’s just been dumped by his girlfriend. His best friend, Clarence Goobril (Keegan Michael Key) has just seen off his wife and daughter on a weekend getaway, so he calls Rell to find him in this state. Clarence tells Rell he’ll spend the whole weekend with him, in an effort to cheer him up. When he gets off the phone, Rell hears something at his door, and when he goes to check, he sees the aforementioned kitten, and takes him in. Rell calls him Keanu, which means “the cool breeze” in Hawaiian.

In the short while, Rell bonds with Keanu, and Clarence arrives to take him out for a bit.  They go, but when they return, Rell’s home is burglarized, and Keanu’s missing. Keanu becomes the MacGuffin that drives the story. Keanu lands in the hands of Cheddar (Method Man), the local drug lord. As Rell and Clarence attempt to recover Keanu, they are mistaken for the assassins who destroyed Cheddar’s supplier’s lab, and he uses that to get them to do a job for him before returning Keanu. They have to play along, because Keanu is everything to Rell.

We see that these two have a lot of pretending to do. Clarence is a classical milquetoast, whose favorite singer is George Michael. Rell has to man up and go nuts for a drug deal involving Anna Faris (as herself).

The film has some dark turns in it, and you can’t be quite sure which end is up. Clarence gets ‘outed’ for appearing as he does and Rell just amps up his performance. Naturally, the real killers are around, and they won’t go down without a fight.

This is a Key and Peele film, and it shows.  I do recommend the film, even with its dark nature.