The “Now, It Can Be Told” files have a new chapter.
Hollywood looked the other way as Cancel Culture silenced comedians, shuttered R-rated comedies and told screenwriters what they could and couldn’t say on screen.
Somebody should write a book about that. Oh, wait…
Now, Jonah Hill has something to say on the subject, in a spiritual sequel to last year’s superior “Jay Kelly.” “Outcome,” an Apple TV+ original, follows a superstar actor struggling to stay ahead of a nasty news cycle.
Except we don’t know what that news cycle might be.
It’s clever on the surface, but Hill’s second narrative feature is nearly derailed by the film’s co-star – Hill himself.
Keanu Reeves is a curious choice to play Reef Hawk, a Tom Cruise-level superstar who has been in the public eye since he was a toe-tapping child star. Reeves’ upbeat, positive brand is legendary, while his character in the film is far from perfect.
He’s globally famous, rich beyond anyone’s dreams and surrounded by his old high school chums, Kyle and Xander (Cameron Diaz and Matt Bomer). And he’s as distant and self-centered as one might imagine, given his fame.
Reef successfully kicked a heroin habit and is ready to make more movies, until his “crisis lawyer” tells him an incriminating video is lurking out there, somewhere.
Hill plays Ira, a legal “fixer,” with a bald head, unruly beard and gleaming white caps. The “Superbad” alum is almost unrecognizable, and that may be a good thing. Hill’s performance is a nightmare, an over-the-top turn that strains to make us laugh but never succeeds.
Grating barely describes it.
It’s up to Ira to find out what the video in question contains and the best way to minimize the PR fallout. Along the way, we learn plenty about Reef’s problematic past, a narrative better realized with that recent George Clooney vehicle.
“Outcome” starts as a navel-gazing exercise in Hollywood greed, but before long the film’s true target emerges – Cancel Culture.
Reef did something to someone at some time, and it’s a mad dash to learn what might have been so problematic to his career.
An offensive film role? A social media message gone awry? A perfectly acceptable movie that’s now deemed problematic?
Or something worse?
One scene finds Ira recruiting a dream team of spin cycle experts to brace for the social media storm. Yes, that’s Laverne Cox handling PR work from a woman’s perspective, and a barely there Roy Wood, Jr. tackling race-related issues.
That’s assuming Reef did something racially charged in the first place. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
That story thread should have been hilarious, but “Outcome” is too brazen in its approach. Plus, anytime Hill is on screen, the comedic potential droops.
Hill, with co-writer Ezra Woods, can be too on the nose even for Elon Musk, the man who coined the term “woke mind virus.”
If you didn’t get where Hill and Woods were going, a bumper sticker closeup does the heavy lifting: “Honk if you can separate the art from the artist.”
The film’s comedic value is shockingly low, but “Outcome” works better as a dramatic closeup of fame gone wild. Reeves seems in considerable pain as he reflects on a life of comfort, not collaboration.
Hill partially redeems himself with a short scene featuring Ira’s physically-challenged son. It’s a soulful moment that shows another side of his character, and the actor handles the sequence beautifully.
It reminds us of his more graceful directorial debut, “Mid-90s.”
“Outcome” has its moments, although considering the material it should have been a slam dunk for Hill given his resume and Hollywood cache. The latter helped him snag Martin Scorsese for a cameo turn, but it didn’t afford him the distance from the material to tease out larger laughs.
The “Superbad”-era Hill might have crushed this topic. Not the 2026 model, sadly.
Instead, “Outcome” is an interesting look at fame, regret and a cultural scourge that Hollywood refused to counter until it faded all on its own.
HiT or Miss: “Outcome” works far better as an X-ray of Hollywood fame than a comedy skewering Cancel Culture madness.
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