As a comedy, Peter Atencio's Keanu doesn't really work. It's not that funny and the actors clearly know they're in a comedy. Here's an example: at one point, the two leads go to a strip club whose name spells out the unfortunate acronym HPV. Instead of just letting the joke lie, one of the characters immediately comments "that's an unfortunate name for a strip club..." It's like that for the whole movie. So again, as a comedy Keanu doesn't work. But as an exploration of performative black identity in America, Keanu is fascinating. The leads Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key are not stereotypical "thuggish" black actors. But they adopt "thuggish" personae throughout the film. I think that the film has something truly interesting to say about black identity politics. But I'll have to defer identifying just what that may be to a member of the black film community.
5/10
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