Best Keanu: “And you are inspired. You feel fantastic. You can do anything.”

Martin Loader’s speech, to his older love interest and aunt-by-marriage-but-not-blood Julia, kind of made me want to escape to Paris to write and to be inspired. To feel fantastic. To know I can do anything. It really is an impassioned exposition, which makes one stop and say, “hey, that’s young Keanu Reeves, making me feel inspired.” Despite the muddled pronunciation of the French words. Because Martin’s not French, is he? So it works just fine. Keanu’s famous rigid acting style of the 1990s is a bit looser here, and it works. I thought Tune in Tomorrow was a fun little film.

I have been to Paris more than once, and know is not always the romantic haven it’s made out to be. The fact that Martin’s fantasies about Paris made me want to go there is a tribute to the mythology of the city (Martin’s never been there, just read the books) and to how earnest young Keanu could be. This is 1990, so this film fell into the mix with Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Point Break, and My Own Private Idaho among others that came out just before or just after.

Which leads to an observation I keep coming back to; Keanu was busy in these years. He also made great creative choices, if I am in a position to judge such a thing; imagine if he had turned down Idaho or Point Break. But he didn’t. Apparently he had an instinct for good roles, or had good people around him to push him toward the right projects.

Barbara Hershey and Keanu work quite well together in this film; it is, again, another time when the plot is Keanu paired with an older woman and the age difference is important to the story. The Prince of Pennsylvania does this to some extent and it was the whole point of Something’s Gotta Give. You are ok with them ending up together at the end of Tune in Tomorrow, even if they have spent most of the movie having their personal life drama manipulated by a radio serial writer named Pedro Carmichael, who apparently instigates drama in his real-life acquaintances in order to get material for his work.

Carmichael is played by Peter Falk, which made me think, again, “Keanu has acted with everyone.” Pretty much. I guess if you’re in the industry long enough that happens, but Keanu seemed to land plum roles right out of the gate. Of course, he was young, cute, ambitious, and likely worked hard. And maybe he was lucky.

Tune in Tomorrow is billed as a comedy, and it has some comedic elements that still land, 33 years on. Peter Falk is long dead, but other actors that show up here are still kicking around: John Larroquette and Peter Gallagher among them. It’s a fun premise, where the scandalous serials Pedro writes are shown in the film. Pedro has a few quirks, like dressing up as his characters to get a sense of who they might be. He also doesn’t like Albanians, which you might think is offensive in 2023, but that aspect of the plot still holds; Pedro is told repeatedly to stop offending Albanians and they, ultimately, get revenge by blowing up the radio station.

The fact that Julia is Martin’s aunt is a little uncomfortable, but the movie gets away with it by making it clear they are not biologically related; and when the tryst shows up in Pedro’s serial, the plot is a ridiculous romance between a presumed brother and sister who, as it turns out, aren’t actually related either. So it all comes off as a bit silly, a bit over the top, and no one gets hurt in the end. Save the owner of that radio station, the second of which has suffered a downfall because of Pedro’s antics.

Ultimately, Tune in Tomorrow is an entertaining watch. It’s a fun popcorn film with a smiling Keanu whose character seems very much in love. It’s hard to beat that.

May 2023