Best Keanu: “If we keep shooting Joey don’t you think he might get suspicious?”

I Love You to Death isn’t really funny, even if you want to call this a black comedy. But the filmmakers are to be forgiven on this point. Given this is loosely based on a true story, it would be hard to figure out exactly what tone to strike if you put the events on film.

Should this film have been a light drama? Well, maybe, but — even if some of this stuff actually happened — who would believe it? It would not be an enjoyable horror or even a crime movie. So black comedy was the chosen direction. It’s tough to pull off, and doesn’t quite land.

Part of the distaste for me, I suppose, is watching this movie a few decades after its release, and no longer finding humor in the intended funny spots. Keanu and William Hurt play cousins, who also happen to be “drug addicts” who aren’t exactly sure what’s going on when they are tasked with finishing the job of killing Joey, a pizzeria owner and philanderer, played by Kevin Kline.

In 2022, the “drug addict” character strikes me as not funny, but rather someone who needs care and help. Maybe these are really the folks Joey’s wife, the real-life version, asked to help her kill her husband. But in a fictionalized retelling it doesn’t matter. The Reeves and Hurt characters are just two of this movie’s problems.

I find it hard to believe that the River Phoenix character — a quasi-spiritual figure who uses runes to divine the fortunes of Joey’s wife Rosalie and her mother — would actually agree to take a gun to a sleeping Joey. Even if, in the movie, this is also presented as an attempt at humor. Phoenix’s character, Devo, misses his mark because he can’t stand to watch when he pulls the trigger.

There’s an interesting early scene with Phoebe Cates, which made me Google to find out if she and Kline are still married (they are). The first few opening segments, when Rosalie and Joey are in their pizzeria, made me restart up this old dream I had of opening a retail shop. I love working retail. I’ve always done it on the side, and for a long time I wanted a store of my own. A tiny brick and mortar where I could sell stuff and talk to people all day.

But that’s an aside. The upshot of I Love You to Death is that it’s not a great film and it’s a waste of great talent, like all of the aforementioned and the great Tracey Ullman, who does a lovely job as the long-suffering Rosalie; although the audience is left scratching its head wondering how she could turn so quickly from forgiving her husband’s shortcomings to deciding, along with her mother, to end his life.

There are a couple of scenes with Keanu, William Hurt, and Kevin Kline. Which made me think that maybe Keanu Reeves has been around for so long and has had so many plum roles he’s basically acted with everyone. Kevin Kline? Check. Al Pacino? Check. Jack Nicholson? Yup. And the list goes on and on and on.

This seems like a silly role for River Phoenix. It’s a waste of his depth. But they can’t all be My Own Private Idaho. Side note: Heather Graham shows up for one scene in this movie and you think her character is going to play a bigger role than she actually does. Another waste. But it was charming to see her so young, perhaps so early in her career.

Keanu looks older in this movie, older than Ted “Theodore” Logan, and I make the comparison because this film came out in 1990, between Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. The one bright spot of I Love You to Death is giving some sense of Keanu’s range — because this guy is a burnout, not dumb, so there’s that.

July 2022