‘Outcome’ Review: Keanu Reeves in Jonah Hill’s Hollywood Satire

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.

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!

Reeves plays Reef Hawk, 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 their areas of expertise pertain to him. Virginia Allen-Green (Laverne Cox) is a renowned attorney for abused women; Reverend Londrus Carter (Roy Wood Jr.) a social justice warrior; and Unis Kim (Atsuko Okatsuka), an activist who crusades against the misrepresentation of Asians. 

None of those characters has much of a purpose beyond providing more people for Hill to bounce his abrasive shtick off, and so the plot never gathers momentum.

There are mildly amusing sight gags, like portraits of Kevin Spacey and Kanye West in Ira’s office building and a bumper sticker on his van that reads: “Honk if you can separate the art from the artist.” And Ira’s hideous taste in ostentatiously labeled designer wear — the pastel blue Issey Miyake Plissé outfit is a hate crime, the Vuitton sweatshirts a punishable offense — might have been good for a laugh if the performance hadn’t been such a grating caricature.

Although it’s conceivable Hill has met some version of these people, there’s no anchoring humanity to make them real, which undercuts both the comedy and the intended soulfulness. Sure, Reef discovers the rewards of genuine contrition, with John Prine’s “How Lucky” doing much of the heavy lifting. But since we never get to experience him at his worst, even secondhand, the slow-dawning epiphany rings hollow.

Sadly, there’s no trace here of the authentic fondness for his characters that illuminated Hill’s directing debut, Mid90s. Just a load of solipsistic L.A. brain rot trying to pass for satire.