Review: "Keanu"

Great hitters can't always field the ball, good choral singers aren't necessarily strong soloists, and fine orators often make poor leaders. And so it is with television comedians trying to make the jump to feature films.

Like Amy Schumer with "Trainwreck," the team behind the Comedy Central hit "Key and Peele" fail to grasp the difference between sketch comedy and film comedy. The former only has to be funny or make sense for a few minutes; the latter has to carry its energy all the way through.

"Keanu" does not. The story of a pair of uptight, upper-middle-class black dudes who spend an evening in the roughest L.A. 'hoods, it's got a handful of laugh-out-loud moments. Most of these revolve around Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) and Rell (Jordan Peele) screaming like little girls when confronted with some horrific act of violence or the prospect of their imminent demise.

On their show, Pelle and Key can easily jump from character to character -- there's always a commercial to break up the sketches. Here they start out as nerdy "Oreos" (black on the outside, white on the inside) and spend the rest of the movie trying to talk and act like the sort of hardcase gangstas they've only experienced through television and film.

The setup is that Rell has his new kitten, Keanu, stolen after his house is broken into -- apparently a case of mistaken identity, as his next door neighbor (Will Forte), is a drug dealer. The kitty keeps changing hends, from Colombian drug lords to a pair of ghost-like killers known only as "the Allentown boys" (actually Key and Pelle, heavily made up) to Cheddar, a local banger played by Method Man.

The running joke is that all these grim characters instantly fall in love with Keanu, and will do anything to get him back, including kill or be killed.

Rell and Clarence foolishly head over to Cheddar's HQ, the Hot Party Vixens club (check that acronym), where they are immediately called out as suburban wimps. So they adopt the personas of Tectonic and Shark Tank -- after the puffer fish in "Finding Nemo?" -- which means dropping their voices an octave and saying the n-word a whole lot.

One of the funnier sequences is where a bunch of them are waiting in Clarence's minivan, which he says he drives because it's inconspicuous, and they turn on his stereo, which left off on a George Michael song. Clarence, ahem, Shark Tank, manages to convince them Michael is actually cool black music.

Tiffany Haddish plays Hi-C, one of Cheddar's crew who starts to take an unlikely shine to Rell/Tectonic, Nia Long is Clarence's wife and Luis Guzman plays the drug lord.

Co-written by Peele and Alex Rubens and directed by Peter Atencio, "Keanu" is the sort of thing you expect from a bunch of TV guys who think they've got what it takes for the big screen. It's a whole lot of obvious jokes -- want to guess if the cat's most famous namesake turns up, at least aurally? -- and playing off the stars' television personalities.

There are three or four good and funny scenes, about enough for a single half-hour episode of "Key and Peele."

Review: "The Best Man Holiday"

I must confess I watched the entirety of "The Best Man Holiday," started writing this review, and only just discovered that it was a sequel. I barely remember the 1999 romantic dramedy, "The Best Man," about a bunch of friends muddling through post-college struggles with careers and relationships.

In retrospect, it seemed an odd title, considering the only wedding is seen in flashback at the beginning, along with a bunch of other snippets from the first movie -- plus new clips to fill in the gaps of what's happened since. If you haven't seen the original (or forgotten it), these don't go a long way in bringing you up to speed.

(Short version: there are four men and five women, all gorgeous African-Americans, some of them have slept with others, some are now married to each other, and there's crossover between those two lists.)

Now it's 15 years later, the friends are approaching 40 and inevitably grown apart. Harper, the author played by Taye Diggs, is no longer the alpha dog of the guys. After a big initial success with a book loosely based on his friends, his follow-up efforts haven't hit it big, and he can't even get his latest work published.

Lance (Morris Chestnut) is now winding up a stellar career as a running back for the New York Giants. He's the most popular player in the NFL, going for the all-time rushing record in his final season. Harper's agent pushes him to write a biography of his friend and cash in.

Of course, rather than just coming right out and asking him, Harper has to dance around Lance for the entire movie, until the unavoidable discovery of his true intentions and the subsequent confrontation.

The whole gang is getting back together at the urging of Lance's wife Mia (Monica Calhoun), who wants them all to stay at their massive mansion for the week of Christmas. She has ulterior motives that aren't too hard to figure out, and which set up the entire second, sappier half of the film.

Harper's wife Robyn (Sanaa Lathan) is about to have their first baby, so he's having all sorts of money/daddy/responsibility issues. Complicating things further is that Mia and Harper had a thing back in the day, and Lance still holds a grudge the size of a linebacker.

Rounding out the cast are Harold Perrineau as Julian, now running an inner-city private school with his ex-stripper wife, Candace (Regina Hall), who finds his funding drying up when her notorious past gets YouTubed; Shelby (Melissa De Sousa), the outrageous girl now a reality TV star, famous for her divorces and obnoxious behavior; Jordan (Nia Long), the committed career girl who's testing the waters of monogamy with a white guy; and Terrence Howard as Quentin, the resident comedic relief and slacker, who's somehow managed to become filthy rich.

Writer/director Malcolm D. Lee puts his cast through some ostentatiously predictable paces, with an emphasis on cheap clashes and souped-up conflict. For instance, at one point Robyn observes Harper consoling Jordan in an obviously chaste embrace after the group receives some bad news, yet she still goes into a jealous huff.

A bunch of the characters have children, who wear amazing clothes and have even better manners. All the kids mysteriously disappear whenever there's a meal or important conversation. Lance, despite having a big game on Christmas Day, only attends one brief practice with his team.

This movie is a bunch of aspirational hooey, jam-packed with false Very Important Moments. In the course of the story there is a wedding (the flashback), a funeral, a birth, a death, a retirement, some breakups and some hook-ups. What's lacking is any surprises.

I still enjoyed spending time with these people; I just wish the warm-and-funny vibe of "The Best Man Holiday" didn't feel like freeze-dried leftovers.

Video review: "Good Hair"

Chris Rock got the idea for "Good Hair" when his young daughter came up to him one day and asked, "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?"

That simple question led to this documentary about black women's relationship to their hair that is heartbreaking and illuminating, and often raucously funny.

Rock roams into Harlem hairdresser shops, an Atlanta stylist convention, factories filled with vats of chemical relaxers, and even remote Indian temples to answer his daughter's question.

What he discovers is a multiple-billion-dollar industry built around the idea of convincing African-Americans their hair needs to be tortured and teased in order to look "natural."

Some of the funniest scenes are in Rock's interviews with beautiful black celebrities like Nia Long, Eve and Raven-Symoné, who talk frankly about the expensive weaves they braid into their own coiffures.

Rock travels to India, visiting back-alley sweatshops where human hair is processed in a primitive fashion to be shipped to Beverly Hills boutiques. He even observes the religious practice of tonsure, the wellspring of this river of hair.

But the movie's real heart lies in Rock's revealing chats with everyday folks in barber shops, in scenes that are both funny and confessional.

Other than a copy of the theatrical trailer, DVD extras are limited to a single item. But it's a doozy: A feature-length commentary track with Rock and producer Nelson George.

The commentary is nearly as much fun as the movie itself, and also offers a few special insights. For example, Rock met one of the film's principal subjects, a hair product magnate, while attending a fundraiser for Barack Obama at Oprah's house.

I also liked their running commentary about their trip to India, including a surprising find by Rock in the local airport, and George's decision to throw away his luggage upon returning home.

The lack of other features is grating, though. What's especially odd is that during their commentary, Rock and George repeatedly refer to things that will be in the DVD extras.

I kept hunting through the disc's menus to find these phantom extras.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 2.5 stars