Comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are making their joint big screen debut on April 29 with Keanu , a film which both comics produced and starred in, and which Peele co-wrote. The movie is ridiculous in the best way, telling the story of a nerdy guy whose pet kitten is stolen by gangsters, leading him to enlist the help of his equally nerdy cousin to get him back and infiltrating the gang in the process. At the center of it all is Keanu, the adorable kitten, who can only have been named after one man. But is the cat's likely namesake, Keanu Reeves, actually in Keanu ?
If you were to go to the IMDb page for the movie, you're not going to find Reeves' name anywhere on the cast list. Or anywhere period, for that matter. The Matrix actor also hasn't shown up in any of the marketing for the film, so going by the evidence at hand, it would seem that Reeves does not appear in the film. And as far as I can tell, that's true. He doesn't appear in the film — but that doesn't mean he wasn't involved. According to Reeves himself, he recorded a voiceover for the movie, and I'd be pretty shocked if that didn't end up in the final cut.
IGN asked Reeves about the film in March, unaware of the actor's involvement, and he surprised them by revealing that he had read the script and recorded a part for it. "I recently did a voiceover for the project – it’s about a cat, though it’s actually not about the cat. There’s a cat named Keanu in it, and so I did a little bit for that," he said. He then spoke briefly about Key and Peele, and how much he enjoyed the script. "They’re lovely comedians – I really enjoy their work," he said. "I haven’t seen the picture – I think it’s still coming together. But definitely reading it and seeing what it was about, it’s kind of a heartwarming story about being better."
So what voiceover role did Reeves do for the film? It hasn't officially been revealed yet, but in his review of the film, Variety 's Justin Chang noted that there is a scene involving the "kitten's very Reeves-like voice" during a hallucination, and odds are that said Reeves-like voice was so dead on because it was provided by Reeves himself.
So although Reeves doesn't physically appear in Keanu, he does lend his iconic voice to the movie. And more likely than not, that voice comes out of the tiny kitten who bears his name — I just hope that the kitten says "Whoa" at some point.
Images: Warner Bros. Pictures; giphy.com
