Keanu Reeves plays a damaged version of himself in toothless Hollywood satire Outcome

Outcome (M18)

83 minutes, now on Apple TV
★★☆☆☆

The story: Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves) has been a star since he was a child. After recovering from drug addiction, he has been a model citizen for five years. A blackmailer appears, threatening to release a video of the actor behaving inappropriately. His crisis lawyer Ira (Jonah Hill) advises Reef to seek forgiveness from everyone he has ever wronged as a strategic move. Reef’s closest friends Kyle (Cameron Diaz) and Xander (Matt Bomer) offer emotional support as he makes peace with friends, family and former work associates.

Will no one pity the movie star? Oscar-nominated co-writer, director and supporting actor Hill (Moneyball, 2011; The Wolf Of Wall Street, 2013) wants viewers to do just that.

Being rich, well-known and beloved is not all it is cracked up to be, he wants to say in this uneven work that blends broad profane comedy with heartfelt moments of emotional vulnerability.

Hill’s lack of success comes despite casting the famously unproblematic Reeves to play Reef, a more damaged version of Reeves.

The pun – Reeves as Reef – gives a clue as to the level of humour one can expect from this study of stardom, particularly in how the power asymmetry between the celebrity and the people around him distorts interpersonal relationships.

Everything becomes brutally transactional, even between family members, as shown when Reef tries to mend fences with his mother Dinah (Susan Lucci). What was intended to be a moment of vulnerability, in a surprise twist, is reduced to material for the television content machine.

Reef goes on a road trip of the soul after receiving a potentially career-ending threat – a half-baked plot device that never builds to anything, an attempt at knitting scattered satirical bits into a coherent whole.

Hill appears to be having the time of his life delivering an over-the-top performance as the stereotypically loud entertainment lawyer specialising in cleaning up messes created by badly behaved clients.

Top-notch stand-up comics, including Atsuko Okatsuka and Roy Wood Jr, play community leaders co-opted into helping the threatened actor. But their well-calibrated performances are drowned out by Hill’s fondness for shouting. While amusing at first, the desperate scene-stealing feels wearying by Outcome’s mid-point.

Hill directed the documentary Stutz (2022) about his real-life therapist Phil Stutz, so Outcome can be understood as Hill’s exploration of his pet topic, mental health.

Too bad, then, that he has trouble saying anything fresh about a subject well-covered in other, better films about the absurdities of life in the Los Angeles entertainment fishbowl.

His on-the-nose examinations sometimes pay off, like when the focus shifts to the public relations response to Reef’s cancellation crisis. Hill’s industry-insider view of the way some Americans create victimhood out of thin air, to wield like a weapon of oppression, is both funny and insightful.

These moments of clarity are few. Hill had an opportunity to view Reef’s crisis as a temporary setback rather than a permanent career killer, given how several once-cancelled comedians are today filling stadiums. Instead, Hill pulls every punch. How very Hollywood of him.

Hot take: Hill wants viewers to care for a movie star in distress, but he is too Hollywood to give this satire of La La Land real bite.