Keanu Reeves' 'Always Be My Maybe' role has people totally obsessing

No one is quite sure how it happened, but after falling out of fashion for a decade or so, Keanu Reeves is back in a very big way.

There's the John Wick series, which is doing so well it has a fourth entry confirmed for 2021. Then there's the fact that he's an all-around thirst trap with enough of a fanbase to warrant his own mini film festival (don't knock KeanuCon). Even Marvel Studios supposedly want to see him join their cinematic universe - and who can argue with them?

Capitalising on this success and the clear love the internet has for the actor, a recent romantic comedy brought Keanu in as a surprise guest... starring as himself.

Always Be My Maybe is a new Netflix rom-com written by (and starring) the seriously underrated Ali Wong and Randall Park. The trailer was quite promising, but it was the stinger that had people losing their minds.

Check out the trailer below:

Anyone who was already on the Keanu bandwagon was thrilled with this addition, and one particular moment ended up entering the GIF hall of fame. There's even an entire Twitter account dedicated to the slo-mo walk in this scene.

Now that the actual movie is out (spoilers: it's pretty great), there's a lot of strong responses out there to the movie, especially the bonkers performance Reeves puts in.

For those who haven't seen it yet, he was written to play an intense and insane version of his real life self, competing with Parks' character when he becomes his romantic rival. This version of Keanu knows everything, leading the actor to improvise random details on set, such as listing Chinese dignitaries, wearing lensless glasses, and lines like "I missed your light"/"I missed your soul".

Check out his first scene here:

“We always knew we wanted him from Day One,” co-writer and star Randall Park told the LA Times. “At that point in the story when Marcus finally knows he has feelings for Sasha and he’s going to tell her but she’s been dating somebody else, we thought, ‘What would be Marcus’ worst nightmare?’”

If Twitter was anything to go by, his character went down very well.

Nahnatchka Khan, the 'Fresh Off the Boat' show runner who makes her directing debut with the rom-com, said that "Keanu completely got it" when he read the script.

“First of all, he read the whole script. A lot of the time somebody of his stature will just read their section. He read the whole script and realized how his character fit in. You’re tracking Marcus during that section because he’s trying to tell her how he feels and she throws this grenade, and it feels like his worst nightmare: It’s literally Keanu Reeves that she’s dating.

“He trusted myself, Ali and Randall to make the joke into what we’d talked about; he is not the butt of the joke — he is in on the joke with us.”

I, for one, welcome this new era of Keanu-tainment.