Tag: Keegan-Michael Key

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Toy Story 4

Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and Forky (Tony Hale) hit the road in Toy Story 4

This month, a spate of articles in publications like Forbes and Cinemablend asked, why are sequels and reboots tanking at the box office this year? Films such as The Secret Life of Pets 2 and Men In Black: International have significantly underperformed industry expectations. Dark Phoenix looks poised to lose about $100 million. After years of reliably turning out audiences, the writers ask, is the endless sequel model faltering?

I usually try to keep talk about the business end of things to a minimum in my columns, because I believe my primary job is to help you, my beloved readers, to decide what films to watch, and the behind-the-scenes stuff is largely irrelevant to your decision. But in this case, as a critic in the trenches, I believe I can answer the question currently obsessing industry observers. Why did these sequels fall short at the box office? Because they’re stupid and they suck.

Not all sequels have done badly at the box office. Avengers: Endgame may well end up being the highest grossing film of all time. Godzilla: King of the Monsters will easily top $100 million domestically and is raking in the money overseas. The franchises that are tanking are the ones that have no visible reason to exist beyond seeming like a safe choice for fearful studio executives.

The gang’s all here!

Which brings us to Toy Story 4, a film that, by my own definition, has no reason to exist. 1995’s Toy Story was the film that launched Pixar and popularized 3D computer animation. 2010’s Best Animated Feature winner Toy Story 3 ended with Andy, the kid who owned Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), going to college, and the toys being passed down to a new kid named Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw). It was a bittersweet tearjerker that, rare for a children’s film, addressed aging and mortality.

In 2010, Pixar said the Toy Story was over, but Disney, in their wisdom, decided we needed another one. The story begins with a flashback. Bo Peep (Annie Potts), who was absent from the third film, is being given away while Woody and the gang mount a rescue operation. Before leaving, she assures Woody that being passed from kid to kid is just part of a toy’s life.

Back in the present, Woody is still Bonnie’s toy, but no longer the favorite like he was with Andy. Languishing in the closet, he makes a spontaneous decision to stow away in her backpack as she goes to orientation on the first day of kindergarten. Bonnie has a hard time fitting in at school, so she makes a new friend. This doesn’t mean she meets another kid, but rather, she makes a toy out of a spork, a popsicle stick, and some pipe cleaners and names him Forky.

The existence of Forky (Tony Hale) foregrounds all sorts of existential questions that hover around the Toy Story premise. He asks the first one himself: “Why am I alive?” Best not to think about it too much, Forky.

Bo Peep (right) leads the toys in an antique store rescue operation.

Forky tries to escape, but Bonnie loves him, so Woody has to bring him back to the fold. This mission becomes more complicated when the family takes a road trip in a rented RV. Woody and the gang are thrown into a series of adventures, escapes, and rescues revolving around a carnival and a small-town antique store. Woody reunites with old flame Bo Peep, who is now living a Furiosa-like existence as a rogue toy.

Directed by longtime Pixar hand Josh Cooley and written by Wall-E director Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom, Toy Story 4 has the magic mix of humor and pathos. A pair of stuffed animals voiced by Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key get huge laughs. The animation is frequently eye-popping. The facial expressions, especially in the early kindergarten sequences, convey more emotion than anyone in Dark Phoenix. The glowing carnival at night and the jumbled interior of the antique store are wonders to behold.

I’ll admit I was skeptical going in, but Pixar proved me wrong. Toy Story 4 may not rise to the level of the greatest Pixar films like Ratatouille or Inside Out, but it is not a waste of time and resources like the other $150 million fiascos polluting the multiplex. I am first in line to lament Hollywood’s dependence on franchises, but when a sequel can deliver on this level, I’ll take it.

Toy Story 4

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Film Features Film/TV

Keanu

I didn’t know we were looking, but I think we may have found our Martin and Lewis.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis started out on the radio, and during the early days of television they were the go-to guys for good-natured, mass-market humor. Dean was the baby-faced crooner, and Jerry was the manic comic savant. They were funny, but their humor was not particularly barbed or boundary pushing like their then lesser-known contemporary, Lenny Bruce.

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele hosted five seasons of sketch comedy on Comedy Central, which is the 21st century equivalent of starting out on radio. Their good-natured, character-based humor hit a chord with Key’s Luthor, President Obama’s “anger translator,” who said what Obama is really thinking underneath his diplomatic exterior.

It’s Keanu, starring Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele and an adorable kitten named Keanu.

Keanu is Key and Peele’s first joint outing since the comedy duo’s show ended last September. The premise is the first joke. Like Keanu Reeves’ 2014 vehicle John Wick, the incident that sets off the plot is a home invasion that results in violence towards animals. In Keanu’s case, it was a beagle named Daisy. In Peele’s case, it’s a cat named Keanu. Peele plays Rell, a schlubby L.A. loser who just got dumped by his girlfriend when he finds the cute little kitten on his doorstep. Unbeknownst to him and his cousin Clarence (Key), the kitten belonged to a drug lord who was just whacked by the Allentown Boys, a pair of assassins — also played by Key and Peele — based on the Cousins from Breaking Bad.

When Clarence’s wife and daughter go out of town a couple of weeks later, Rell convinces him to go out for a night on the town — which to Rell means seeing a Liam Neeson movie and heading back to his apartment to smoke some weed. But when they arrive at the apartment, they find it has been trashed, and little Keanu is missing. Rell enlists Clarence on a mission to retrieve the cat, first by shaking down his next-door weed dealer Hulka (Will Forte). Their investigation leads them to the 17th Street Blips, a bunch of gangbangers so tough they were kicked out of both the Bloods and the Crips. After bluffing their way into the gang’s strip club headquarters, they find that Keanu is in the hands of their leader, Cheddar (Method Man), who has renamed the feline “New Jack” and dressed him in a do-rag and gold chain. Our heroes are mistaken for the Allentown Boys and sent by the gang boss on a high-stakes ride-along with the rest of the gang, which includes Hi-C (Tiffany Haddish), a flinty, but beautiful, gang captain who catches Rell’s eye. Their mission is to deliver a shipment of a new drug called Holy Shit, which is said to be so potent as to have the effect of “smoking crack with God.” If they succeed in their mission, Cheddar promises to return Keanu as a sign of respect. Lies stack upon lies, and the two nerdy friends find themselves pulled deeper into the criminal world.

Key and Peele’s frantic code switching between nerdy everymen and harder-than-thou gangsters is the best part of Keanu. Key, the taller and more imposing of the two, is especially good when he turns his voice down to a menacing growl to explain to his heavily armed charges why George Michael was an original gangster. The pair’s chemistry, carefully cultivated across five seasons of TV, translates well to the big screen. They have a lot of fun with contemporary action movie cliches, such as the duct tape bandage that magically fixes a horrendous wound, and the seemingly normal guy who, in a fit of rage, becomes a killing machine. The real Keanu Reeves even has a cameo as the voice of his namesake kitten during a Holy Shit-induced drug trip.

Realism and character consistency aren’t priorities for director Peter Atencio, who concentrates on foregrounding his stars’ personas. The result has its moments of good fun, but like many before them who have discovered the difficulty of making the comic transition from small screen to big screen, Key and Peele’s first venture into the movies seems ultimately disposable.

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Pitch Perfect 2

Pitch Perfect 2 is more self-aware and self-consciously “edgy” than its not-entirely-wholesome predecessor. However, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if this hugely profitable sequel fails to engender the same levels of love and affection as the original film: the drop-off in quality is sad, and it too often replaces the joyful noises of group singing with the sickening thud of easy jokes falling flat.

Released in 2012, Pitch Perfect’s best qualities—its non-stop sass, its coy takes on college romance, and its generous female characterizations—were explicitly linked to unhip, old-fashioned notions of community, cooperation, solidarity and democracy. Whether they were squabbling or singing their hearts out, the all-girl Barden Bellas often looked and acted like a good group that just needed to get it together. Their all-for-one spirit was most visible in Pitch Perfect’s two defining musical numbers: a “riff-off” in a drained swimming pool that revives “No Diggity” as a modern American spiritual, and a final number that—and believe me, I wish this wasn’t true—brings tears of joy to my eyes every time I watch it.

Pitch Perfect bounces along like a great Lily Allen album; Pitch Perfect 2 stumbles along like a thrown-together collection of demos, outtakes and solo experiments from any pop star who wants to be taken seriously. This is a careless, placid, steer-like entertainment which bides its time and chews its cud as it awaits the online butchering that will give the masses shorter, tidier, easily consumable clips. Anna Kendrick will endure no matter what, though: she’s a sotto voce wiseacre who overcompensates for her tiny, sticklike stature—she’s always looking up at someone—by spitting lines at His Girl Friday speed until either she or whoever she’s talking to runs out of gas. But Rebel Wilson, a.k.a. Fat Amy, doesn’t escape as cleanly. Her natural deadpan and comic timing hint at vast reservoirs of mischief that lend her both grace and a certain wry dignity, but she constantly undercuts these traits every time she falls down or runs into something. (Which may be the joke, but it’s a dumb one.) Still, her Pat Benatar number is probably the musical highlight of the movie.

The rest of the wreckage—which includes David Cross, Clay Matthews, Keegan-Michael Key, the rest of the supporting cast, and a Snoop Dogg Christmas mash-up—is too dreary to contemplate. This disappointing musical reinforces an old, deeply-held conviction: whenever performers sing just to hear the sound of their own voice, they’re really obnoxious.

Grade: C