Directed By Jonah Hill

Starring – Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz, Jonah Hill

The Plot – Follows Hollywood star Reef (Reeves) as he is forced to confront his problems and atone for his past after being threatened by a bizarre video footage from his past.

Rated R for adult language throughout and sexual references.

Outcome — Official Trailer | Apple TV

POSITIVES

While much about Jonah Hill’s third act sitting in the director’s chair feels wallowingly self-serving, with regards to his own real life trials and tribulations with cancel culture celebrity, there are a couple of noteworthy endearing aspects to the inconsistency of his execution that at least provide ample argument for legitimate effort being appraised to such a problematic experience, particularly some meaningful merits within the movie’s presentation that effectively conjure the overwhelming artificialities of Hollywood. Between sunbaked cinematography from Gaspar Noe collaborator, Benoit Debie, who utilizes unnatural lighting schemes, coldly callous wide angle framing, and an abundance of greenscreen backdrops to effectively conjure an immediate disbelief to the scenic splendor of what we’re interpreting in real time, to the absorbing details of set designs coherently illustrating the unsettling realities of its many characters far more thoroughly than the script ever had time to, there’s a real artistic exuberance emitted to the film’s deeper ideology that not only permeates an intoxicating canvas that feels so unfamiliar to Apple Plus engagements, but also effortless articulation to the many environments involved in Reef’s everyday life, that feel so lonely and loveless compared to what we would expect from a pop culture icon, in turn submitting what would undeniably be its crowning achievement, if the leading performance from Keanu Reeves didn’t push him into darkly uncomfortable avenues of emotionality than we’re not used to seeing from him. While the film is graced by an abundance of celebrity cameos who stop by in an attempt to make up for a substantially vapid and unengaging screenplay, Reeves is legitimately treating the role as an opportunity to indulge upon the sensibilities for deliveries that very few fans of his have experienced over the last twenty years, and considering the movie surrounding his Herculean efforts is continuously crumbling at the seams with detracting components that fail to work cohesively with his professional approach, it feels like a breath of fresh air whenever Reeves delves into the unforeseen revelations of the selfishness adorned within the character, where despite Reeves effortless naturality as a sweetly gentle screen presence, reaches for depth in the form of angsty blowups and painfully internalized responses that submits legitimate acting to a movie that definitely doesn’t earn it, in turn proving him capable of being so much more than the kind of action star that has dominated the second half of his prestigious career.

NEGATIVES

Imagine being stuck in an inescapable room with an overly dramatic celebrity whining about the disadvantages of such a blessed lifestyle, and you have an experience that replicates Outcome seamlessly for an evidentially obvious vanity project for Jonah Hill, whose off-screen troubles captured in-depth in the public eye have materialized a therapeutic output that won’t appeal to even the most die hard enthusiasts of the actor, particularly as a result of the abundance of scatterbrained creativity and painfully unfunny material that made this feel unrelentingly dull for even the bare minimum of a 78-minute feature length film. For starters, the commentary itself co-written by Hill is exercised in the form of a contextual mystery that involves Reef attempting to pay-off an ambiguous blackmailer seeking a big payday for themselves, however between Reef’s own corrosive personality waning incessantly upon the nerves of audiences forced to endure him, and a clumsily incohesive screenplay that somehow pits blame on Reef’s closest family and friends, rather than any of his adoring fans, the mystery never materializes compellingly into hooking audiences towards being driven by the curiosity of the big reveal, a fact made all the more nonrelevant by the big reveal during the tail end of the second half, which feels so underwhelming and suddenly enacted that it leaves the climax of the movie moping around during its final thirty minutes, enacting more of an overly dramatic tone, the likes of which the movie never earns with abrasively intrusive comedy so painfully unfunny that I scoffed loudly at even the slightest attempt to channel laughter to situations that tastelessly didn’t call for them. This is a movie whose idea of subtlety is sandwiched somewhere between set design pictures of canceled celebrities such as Kanye West and Kevin Spacey, in between an automobile sticker that the camera bluntly focuses on, saying “Honk if you can separate the art from the artist”, and while I’m always someone who appreciates a stirring satire among the movie industry, the kind here leaves Hill feeling like a resentful teenager rather than an easing advocate, allowing him to hijack the project to serve his own needs against career-ruining allegations. As a result, Jonah Hill shamelessly inserts himself as Reef’s sleazy lawyer, who not only utilizes this obnoxiously overdone performance as a means of enacting a juvenile consistency of gags that clash so erratically with the film’s tone, but also in pulling away primary focus from the established protagonist, as a means of selling his own brand of concentration-breaking Jerry Lewis acting, and considering so much of the film already wastes away an abundance of noteworthy cameos, as nothing more than names to call upon in Hill’s black book or famous friends, the film would be so much better suited without Hill’s inclusion stretching sequences that don’t even remotely call for them, a fact made all the more unintentionally hilarious when you consider scenes not involving Hill’s character are condensed and hyphenated with overly-anxious editing practices that keep the script from ever effectively exploring even one of the many fascinating ideas that it continuously hurls at the audience. Such an example can be found in some emotionally stirring scenes involving Reef coming to terms with those he’s wronged, where we learn more about the character in the painfully haunting memories of others, twice as much as the unnaturally overstuffed dialogue that shoehorns as much insight about the characters as about fifteen minutes of edited-out exposition. Unfortunately, these moments are in such a rush to maintain so much of the movie’s breakneck pacing that it abruptly resolves itself in jarring cuts, long before the interaction of the characters ever has a chance to, and in a film already conflicted by unengaging storytelling and such unlikeable characters, the delivery of the movie’s sequencing might be the single most glaring intrusion among audience investment, where another even twenty to thirty minutes could help wield a greater sense of consciousness and understanding to these characters. While I always appreciate a movie that doesn’t test my patience unnecessarily, especially within the confines of a movie that I’m so unabashedly not enjoying, I feel that the minimizing here does a grave disservice to so much of the eventual emotionality that springs spontaneously during Reef’s third act epiphany, leaving a film marred by humility reaching for so much heart. Because of such, the underwhelming returns start to overwhelm in volume and insignificance, particularly a surmising drug rehab history for Reef that is so casually glossed over that it undermines the stakes and meaningful magnitude of a deteriorating friendship with his two longest friends (Played by Cameron Diaz and Matt Bomer), but even in the case of its sprawling mystery, without enough grasp on the motivation of these introduced characters to feel a greater sense of significance driving our curiosity, and considering the mystery drifts aimlessly from suspect to suspect, without any of the attained knowledgeable insight sitting with Reef to inflict some semblance of impact to his unforeseen truths, it frequently feels like a movie that plays in fast-forward, an unfortunate element that wouldn’t be as jarring if we didn’t have to hear these characters speak.

OVERALL
Outcome is a painfully unfunny and disengaging exercise in self-wallowing futility, with up-and-coming filmmaker, Jonah Hill, using the first of his two yearly projects to prod seething discontent for an ever-evolving industry that threatens to leave him behind, as a result of off-screen troubles that have compromised his once impeccable image as everybody’s favorite lovable lug. With the subtlety and subversiveness in commentary of a Mack truck falling off of the Empire State Building, the film’s initial exploration of a troubled movie star doesn’t have enough attainable empathy or explorative depth to conjure curiosity, as a means of its barely substantial 78-minute runtime, leaving a surprisingly layered performance from Keanu Reeves, as well as an overcrowded abundance of celebrity cameos, curbed by the crassly indulgence of Hill that hems its humbling humanity, leaving a tonally imbalanced and narratively jumbled excursion that doesn’t overstay its welcome as much as it understates its intention

My Grade: 3.4 or F