Outcome plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

“It would be easier sometimes to change the past”

(lyric borrowed from Jackson Brownes "Fountain of Sorrow" [1974])

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.  However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be coming soon.  (Note: Anything in bold blue [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)

My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)

However, if you’d like to know more about rationale of my ratings visit this explanatory site.

                    Outcome (Jonah Hill)   rated R   84 min.

Here’s the trailer:

      (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size; 

      activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

WHAT HAPPENS: We first meet Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves) as a young child signing and dancing on The Tonight Show (played by uncredited Jude Friedman) after an intro from Johnny Carson (I guess either AI-generated or a carefully-chosen clip).  Then we jump ahead years to adult Reef with his close associates/friends since high-school, Kyle (Cameron Diaz) and Xander (Matt Bomer), working with him to plan a public strategy of why—after being a mega-movie star for 4 decades, with 2 Oscars, leads in 3 profitable franchises, lots of press and public adoration—he’s been on hiatus for 5 years, as he’s loath to reveal it was a time of sobriety after years of heroin addiction when he was privately much more of an asshole than he was known to be.  However, his comeback is put on hold when he has an emergency meeting with crisis lawyer Ira Slitz (a very slimmed-down Jonah Hill), about some damaging video that could upend his career unless he pays a $15 million ransom.  Ira suggests Reef make personal apologies to everyone he’s ever wronged (a huge list it turns out) in hopes of satisfying the unknown blackmailer.  In his quest to do so, we see Reef attempt to soothe long-ago manager Richie “Red” Rodriguez (Martin Scorsese) who’s largely forgiving, ex-lover Savanna (Welker White) who bluntly puts him down, and his mother, Diana Hawk (Susan Lucci), a Real Housewives TV star who insists his apology be filmed to use on her program.

 But just before he’s about to go massively-public with a live confession on Drew Barrymore’s interview show, where consultants encouraged a portrayal as the victim, he has a change of heart, walks off the set just before airtime, Drew furious at him.  ⇒Ira solves the problem by getting the blackmailer (sorry, I didn’t get his name) to take $35K, hand over the video (which the guy found on some old computer) just because he needed cash; the content was (oddly) a split screen of Reef and a prostitute in separate motel rooms talking on the phone.  Reef wants to be a better man so he continues with the apology tour, especially toward Kyle and Xander (during the credits we see the latter jumping in for the Barrymore interview where he gets her to talk about her life after E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial [Steven Spielberg, 1982])⇐ (I can’t link you to more Outcome plot, but this source does have useful production details plus a large clump of helpful background references.)

SO WHAT? The self-imposed arbitrary restrictions I’ve recently put on myself to only review 2026 releases that can be found on streaming have already provided some difficult limits as to what I’m able to find to write about, with Outcome being a good example of something I might have passed over (close to Passover, of course) given the tepid response from the cinematic critics community (see the next section just below for details on their dismissals) had it not been for my many prior positive on-screen encounters with Reeves, Hill, and Diaz—all of whom were quite effective in their roles, with solid supporting work from the rest of the cast, especially the apology recipients I noted just above—so I was quite willing to see what they’re up to in this instance, which worked reasonably well with the initial premise but just didn’t seem to go much farther than showing Reef’s slowly-evolving sincerity as he tries to make amends with those he’s mistreated in previous years.  The whole thing ends on a rather flat note with a minimum amount of useful satire on insider-Hollywood even though that’s supposed to be the premise.  You’ll find a much-more effective version of such satire by visiting Hill’s old cinema partner, Seth Rogan, and his multiple-Emmy-winning streaming series, The Studio, which you can find for free on Apple TV, although the 10 episodes would take you about 5 hours to watch which is considerably more than the thankfully-short Outcome (written by Hill and Ezra Woods), which I somewhat enjoyed, wasn’t overly impressed by.

BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Outcome debuted on streaming just last weekend where it’s no cost to Apple TV subscribers (or free for 7 days, then you could pay $12.99 monthly), although the OCCU provides little encouragement to watch it with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at a miserable 31%, the Metacritic average score at a suprisingly-higher 37% (but that’s based on only 17 reviews so it may change later).  One of the few to offer any praise for it (MC 75%) is my local San Francisco Chronicle guru Mick LaSalle who says: “Perhaps what allows Hill to succeed is that he knows the truth of what he's presenting, and that these wild shifts are in harmony with how he sees the world he's depicting. Sometimes the organizing principle behind a work of art needs to be nothing more than the mind of the artist doing the creating. […] ‘Outcome’ is a nice reminder of the kind-spirited quality that Reeves can bring to the screen when he's not murdering hundreds of people in the course of a ‘John Wick’ movie. It's not too late to go back to being a sweet guy.”  More common, though, is David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter: “Reeves’ introspective humility comes close to poignancy at times, but everyone else is in a different movie — one that would likely never have been made without Hill’s name on the script. […] But since we never get to experience him at his worst, even secondhand, the slow-dawning epiphany rings hollow. [¶] Sadly, there’s no trace here of the authentic fondness for his characters that illuminated Hill’s directing debut, Mid90s. Just a load of solipsistic L.A. brain rot trying to pass for satire.”  Maybe you’ll want to watch this Hollywood-insider movie, maybe not, but at least give some consideration to my Musical Metaphor for what’s on screen here, Brenda Lee’s "I'm Sorry" (on her 1960 Brenda Lee album, a big hit for her when she was a mere 15), where her words of “You tell me mistakes / Are part of being young / But that don’t right / The wrong that’s been done” feel appropriate about Reef’s situation as he has to deal with all of the misery he’s caused others even as his career soared.  This is not a great viewing experience (sorry, Mick), but it does speak to some celebrity-truth as it unfolds.

                    

SHORT TAKES        

                

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

 

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