'Outcome' review: Keanu Reeves' Apple movie is a muddled mess (Susan Lucci excepted)

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Keanu Reeves plays a Hollywood star on an apology tour in "Outcome," a new Apple TV movie directed by Jonah Hill. Hill is also a co-writer of the screenplay with Ezra Woods and a co-star in the dramedy, in which Reeves' Reef Hawk makes amends with those he's wronged after an anonymous person blackmails him by threatening the release of damning video footage.

Hill packs "Outcome" with more big names than a single movie that clocks in at less than an hour-and-a-half can reasonably handle. Cameron Diaz and Matt Bomer play Reef's best friends. Hill plays Ira Slitz, his crisis lawyer.

Also turning up here: David Spade, Kaia Gerber, Garden City's own Susan Lucci as Reef's mom, Laverne Cox, Roy Wood Jr., Drew Barrymore as herself, Van Jones (yes, the CNN pundit) and, perhaps most improbably of all, Martin Scorsese as an agent to child actors who holds court in a bowling alley.

MY SAY "Outcome" plays like a lower-rent version of "Jay Kelly," last year's Noah Baumbach picture in which George Clooney played a version of himself in a feature-length meditation on movie stardom.

Reeves, a fine and underappreciated actor, almost always plays a version of himself just by default. He is who he is, and he does what he does well, and you either take it or leave it. But the choice of roles is key, and he isn't dynamic enough to front a movie like this without the disguises afforded by, say, Neo in "The Matrix" or John Wick.

So you're left with a void at the center of "Outcome" as he plays an A-list star who has fronted several big franchises and lives in a Malibu beach house. The circumstances are different, obviously, but there's no world in which Reef Hawk doesn't come across as a thinly disguised version of Keanu Reeves, driving around Southern California and looking sad.

Hill tries to make up for the energy deficit by devouring every inch of the screen when he turns up as the crisis lawyer. But the character is so awful, so cringeworthy, such a bellowing, crass cliche, that he wrecks every moment he's in. And there are a lot of them. A different director would have told him to dial it back in a big way. But that's hard direction to give yourself.

So we get a movie that vacillates wildly between Reeves' attempts at introspection, Hill's mania, and the collection of supporting famous people who pop up for a moment or two before departing. Scorsese and Lucci are undeniably terrific. They're at the center of the best scenes in the movie. No one else resonates.

"Outcome" wants to evoke the uniquely strange feeling of no longer feeling up to the demands of extraordinary fame. These sorts of stories require a thoughtful and measured approach, and the right perspective. Hill comes at it with a heavy hand and a wrecking ball.

BOTTOM LINE A muddled mess.