The Awful '80s Comedy That Keanu Reeves Headlined Before His Rise To Fame

It's easy to look at Keanu Reeves' long career and surmise that the man has been on top for decades. As the star of the "John Wick" films, he cemented his standing as one of the all-time greats of Hollywood and has a long list of equally great movies on his résumé dating all the way back to the 1980s. But like any actor, Reeves has experienced ups and downs, and some of the downs have been pretty abject.

Even prior to his first appearance as the titular assassin in 2014's "John Wick," Reeves was at a real nadir career-wise. His 2010 rom-com "Henry's Crime" failed at the box office, after which Reeves took a short break from acting to produce a documentary before starring in the independent drama "Generation Um..." in 2012. That film currently bears a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which isn't always the best guide (after all, we're talking about the same site that claims there's only two "perfect" sci-fi movies), but in the case of "Generation Um...," that 0% is a pretty good representation of the film's quality.

Though Reeves' 2013 directorial debut "Man of Tai Chi" was well-received, it was a commercial disappointment, and things only got worse when the actor fronted the massive box office flop that was "47 Ronin." It was only with "John Wick" that Reeves started to make a comeback, and ever since then, he's gone from strength to strength (though he's still found time to star in the odd stinker, 2019's "Replicas" being one example).

Of course, the early 2010s weren't the only time Reeves struggled in his career. Prior to landing his breakout role as Ted Logan in 1989's "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," Reeves racked up an impressive list of duds. That includes a horrible comedy that even he, with all his Keanu charm, struggled to redeem in any way.

Keanu Reeves' first acting job was on the Canadian television series "Hangin' In" back in 1984, in which he had a minuscule role as "Teen Client." He then made his feature debut in the 1986 sports drama "Youngblood," playing the part of the Mustangs' goaltender Heaver. Two years later, he was busier than he'd ever been up to that point in his career, appearing in four movies, including "Dangerous Liaisons," which went over well with critics. The other three, however, did not. "Permanent Record" was the least disappointing in that regard, with Reeves playing a teenager whose best friend dies by suicide. It wasn't quite the critical hit that "Dangerous Liaisons" was, but several critics, Roger Ebert among them, were very impressed. However, the dramedy "The Prince of Pennsylvania" fared much worse, especially with Ebert, who wrote in his (negative) review, "A movie about any of these people might have had a chance, if the filmmakers had retained a shred of sanity."

But even "The Prince of Pennsylvania" and its horrible reviews couldn't compare to the misstep that was Reeves' final 1988 release: "The Night Before." The actor starred in the film as Winston Connelly, a nerdy high schooler who is shocked when popular cheerleader Tara Mitchell (Lori Laughlin of "Full House" fame) asks him to prom. But things go awry when Connelly wakes up in an alleyway hours after the date and can't recall what happened to him or Tara, who has gone missing. The movie then plays out in a series of flashbacks as the youngster tries to piece together his night and figure out why he wound up in an alley, what happened to Tara, and why a pimp wants him dead.

"The Night Before" was directed by Thom Eberhardt, who is otherwise known for writing and directing the 1984 cult sci-fi horror-comedy "Night of the Comet" and penning the 1992 "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" sequel, "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid." Judging by contemporary reactions, however, Eberhardt is lucky "The Night Before" didn't bring his career to a premature end, as multiple Letterboxd users agree the film is more than a little racially insensitive (and not just by modern standards).

"The Night Before" only has two reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, neither of which comes from a "top critic." As such, the film doesn't have a Tomatometer score to go by at this point, with one of the reviews on the website being positive and the other negative. Judging by general audience reactions, though, the positive review really should've been negative, given the movie's insensitive representation of certain groups.

Over on Letterboxd, where the film has a 2.8 overall rating, users certainly weren't too impressed, with one admitting that "Keanu has never been this cute" but ultimately describing the movie as "a 90-minute racist dumpster fire." Indeed, Reeves seems to have been the only positive thing about the film as far as modern viewers are concerned, with another user remarking, "If Winston wasn't played by Keanu, I wouldn't have tolerated this." That said, others didn't even think Reeves' presence redeemed the film's otherwise horrifically problematic approach, with one Letterboxd user writing, "The racial stereotypes are off putting! Cliché ridden and extremely dated!" adding, "The poster states it's from 'The Lost Collection;' perhaps we would have been better off if it had never been found or, better yet, if it had never have [sic] been made in the first place." 

It's true that pretty much every non-white character in "The Night Before" is depicted as some sort of reprobate, undesirable, or criminal, and the "humor" in these scenes is more than a little inconsiderate. Case in point: When Reeves' character tries to converse with a Black man he encounters, it involves the actor affecting what he evidently sees as the requisite vernacular in a scene that was surely as cringeworthy back in 1988 as it is today.

Not Reeves' finest moment, then. But at least he managed to make a good impression on some viewers, as well as his co-star. In 2024, Lori Laughlin appeared on the "How Rude, Tanneritos!" podcast (via The Hollywood Reporter) and looked back on her time working with Reeves, calling him "a lovely, lovely man." The actor also recalled some less fond memories, revealing that on one occasion, she returned to set while shooting scenes in "downtown Los Angeles at night" and someone "had been murdered in the alleyway where we were just shooting." Thankfully, such experiences are long behind Reeves, whose return in "John Wick: Chapter 5" is now highly anticipated.