Keanu is a nerd comedy that’s the opposite of Big Bang Theory

Nerdy cousins Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) and Rell (Jordan Peele) try to act like gangbangers to rescue Keanu the preternaturally adorable kitten. (credit: Warner Bros.)

There's a whole subgenre of nerd comedy out there like Big Bang Theory that's about laughing at nerds, poking fun at them for being on the spectrum, asexual, or both. But now, thanks to comedians like Key & Peele, John Oliver, and writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), there is another kind of nerd comedy--a great kind, where we laugh with the nerds, and those nerds have personalities that go beyond stale stereotypes. Key & Peele's first feature film, Keanu, is a perfect example of this kind of comedy. It's not perfect, but it will crack you up just like a good internet meme does.

Though the sketch comedy show Key & Peele airs on Comedy Central, it found an audience on YouTube. There, clips from the show racked up millions of views and popularized the comedians' sharp blend of dork pop culture references and satirical takes on racial weirdness in America. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are both biracial, and their resulting insider/outsider experiences are often fodder for their sketches—and fuel many of the jokes in Keanu, too. The premise of the movie, like a lot of the bits on their show, is that they're two geeky, middle-class guys who talk like white people (or, as Key says to Peele in Keanu, "You sound like John Ritter all the time.") And this can get awkward, for all kinds of reasons.

In Keanu, the problem is that movie-loving stoner Rell (Peele) must drag his wonky cousin Clarence (Key) into an L.A. gang war to rescue his kitten (the eponymous Keanu). Turns out that all the people who couldn't make it into the Crips and the Bloods have formed a new gang, the Blips. And their leader, Cheddar, has kidnapped Keanu. Why? It's a long shaggy-dog fluffy-kitten story that involves turf wars, two scary gang ninjas from Allentown, and a new kind of super-drug called Holy Shit. To get the kitten back, Rell and Clarence infiltrate the Blips by pretending to be gangsters, dropping N-bombs, and doing their best to act ghetto in chinos and pastel shirts.

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