Keanuthon

12:59pm – “Tune In Tomorrow”, 1990

We are finally into the 90s. Matt has already deemed the opening credits of this movie to be “great.”

A scant three minutes in and we have already seen Keanu. This is gonna be a good one. OK, I admit, I’ve seen this one before, so I already know it is gonna be a good one. Does that count as cheating?

I think I just detected a bit of a Southern accent in Keanu’s voice, but just a bit.

In this movie, we are firmly, firmly out of high school. In “Parenthood” he was dating someone in high school. In “Life Under Water” he was out of high school but not in college, and in “Bogus Journey” (which was released after this), he was after high school, and was in fact, dead.

Matt made the fine observation that there are no college age Keanu movies, to which I made the point that the reason is because Keanu never went to college. Although he does have numerous “high school” movies despite the fact he dropped out of high school. But (returning if one can to the original, highly unoriginal point) Keanu is a notoriously hard worker and I am willing to bet he would have actually gone to college, if someone had (or even if someone were to offer him a role a l� the Rodney Dangerfield opus “Back to School”) offered him a college student/collegeagekidthypething role. And we are all pretty sure he has been to colleges, even if he has not “been” to college – which gives him more than enough experience for a college movie. Keanu is also referred to many times as “college boy” in this movie.

Does Keanu have an honorary degree from anywhere?

1:31pm – This looks like the second “Oedipal complex” reference of the day—first was back in the Bill and Ted… there are also some ties to “Young Again,” where Keanu also goes for the older woman. Offering ice cream with chocolate and what not, but I guess the big difference would have to be the lack of pretending to be his own son (because his wish was granted by an angel on the bus) in this movie.

THE KEANUS! Huge big idea oh my god that’s enormous! We hold the Keanus at the end of the ‘thon! 5 nominations for each category: Best leading performance, best supporting actor, best Oedipal complex reference… Wow. This stemmed from another, more “minor” idea, that of having the Keanu scorecard, where ‘thon participants (“invitees”? “thonners”?) keep track of things like number of whoa’s, number of River Phoenix references (or actual number of River Phoenixes) (or actual number of Phoenixes, River, Leaf or otherwise), etc.

CKPL: “I’m 21 I lost my cherry 5 years ago.”

Apparently Keanu “lost his cherry” at 16. That’s what he’s saying here. Maybe he means the time he zipped two sleeping bags together and got it on with Ione Skye.

We’ve moved on from low-level unfunny racist content (in the really early movies) to this classic and wonderfully done scathingly askance look at Albanians, courtesy Peter Falk. Love me some Falk.

Keanu is telling Barbara Hershey, “I’m sincere. I’m not filthy.” But in Prince of Pennsylvania he says “yuckiness is truth.” Difficicult to tell where he is on this filthiness/yuckiness issue.

Keanu gets to wear both a wacky pyjama-looking swimsuit and a wacky tennis outfit in this movie.

2:00pm – great dance montage moment (swing dancing this time)

Had forgotten Patricia Clarkson was in this (way back before she was “Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson”) – great to see her (if even somewhat wasted), think she is super.

The end of this movie (not the very end, but the end of the radio serial & the radio station) is good, but needs more Keanu (I know, I know, broken record – but still the truth. Liking his accent in this – only noticed one spot where it wavered was when he was battling with his little brother to pick up the phone.

Fun movie – might or might not be one of the reasons we ‘thon (which we’ll debate later), but it sure is good.