[41] Film critic Roger Ebert thought it was "a riot of visual invention and weird humour that works on its chosen sub-moronic level [...] It's the kind of movie where you start out snickering in spite of yourself, and end up actually admiring the originality that went into creating this hallucinatory slapstick".

[44] My Own Private Idaho was positively received, with Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly describing the film as "a postmodern road movie with a mood of free-floating, trance-like despair [...] a rich, audacious experience".

[48] Reeves's performance was praised by The New York Times for "considerable discipline and range", adding, "He moves easily between the buttoned-down demeanour that suits a police procedural story and the loose-jointed manner of his comic roles".

[51] In 1991, Reeves developed an interest in a music career; he formed an alternative rock band called Dogstar, consisting of members Robert Mailhouse, Gregg Miller and Bret Domrose.

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune lauded Reeves, calling him "absolutely charismatic [...] giving a performance juiced with joy as he jumps through elevator shafts [...] and atop a subway train".

Reeves's next leading role came in the 1995 cyberpunk action thriller Johnny Mnemonic, directed by artist Robert Longo and based on the 1981 story of the same name by William Gibson.

[70] Roger Ebert opined that the film is one of the "great goofy gestures of recent cinema, a movie that doesn't deserve one nanosecond of serious analysis but has a kind of idiotic grandeur that makes you almost forgive it.

[76] The Sunday Times critic Roger Lewis believed his performance, writing he "quite embodied the innocence, the splendid fury, the animal grace of the leaps and bounds, the emotional violence, that form the Prince of Denmark ...

[77] Reeves was soon drawn to science fiction roles, appearing in Chain Reaction (1996) with co-stars Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz, Fred Ward, Kevin Dunn and Brian Cox.

[87] Reeves portrays computer programmer Thomas Anderson, a hacker using the alias "Neo", who discovers humanity is trapped inside a simulated reality created by intelligent machines.

To prepare for the film, which was written and directed by the Wachowskis, Reeves had read Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, and Dylan Evans's ideas on evolutionary psychology.

[91] Janet Maslin of The New York Times credited Reeves for being a "strikingly chic Prada model of an action hero", and thought the martial arts stunts were the film's strongest feature.

[98] Desson Thompson of The Washington Post criticized it for its "syrupy cliches, greeting-card wisdom and over-the-top tragicomedy", but commended Reeves for his likability factor in every performance he gives.

Reeves plays Conor O'Neill, a troubled young man who agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of obtaining a loan.

[101] Sometime afterwards, Reeves performed in the band Becky for a year, founded by Dogstar band-mate Rob Mailhouse, but quit in 2005, citing a lack of interest in a serious music career.

Reeves and the cast garnered positive critical reviews, with The Washington Post describing it as "a gently stirring symphony about emotional transition filled with lovely musical passages and softly nuanced performances".

Despite its box office success,[121] Mark Kermode of The Guardian was highly critical, writing "this syrup-drenched supernatural whimsy achieves stupidity at a genuinely international level [...] The last time Bullock and Reeves were together on screen the result was Speed.

[127] Many critics were unimpressed with the heavy use of special effects; The Telegraph credited Reeves' ability to engage the audience, but thought the cinematography was abysmal and the "sub-Al-Gore environment lecture leaves you light-headed with tedium".

The film has multilingual dialogue and follows a young man drawn to an underground fight club, partially inspired by the life of Reeves' friend Tiger Chen.

[183][184] Footage shot for the project would remain in development hell for years due to creator Carl Rinsch's erratic behaviour and mental health state, which caused him to miss several deadlines and enter litigation with Netflix over the rights to the series.

[204][205] After occasionally meeting up for jam sessions in the years following their dissolution, Dogstar began recording new material during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which turned into a finished album, Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees (2023).

[206] Following their first performance in 20 years at BottleRock Napa Valley music festival,[207] Reeves and the band embarked on a 25-date tour in North America and Japan in support of the album, beginning August 10 in Hermosa Beach, California.

[216] By the end of May 2024, Netflix won litigation over the rights to the Reeves-produced Conquest series, with the footage reverting to their ownership alongside being reimbursed for $8.78 million worth of creator Carl Erik Rinsch's misused production money.

[252][253] Reeves also maintains a close friendship with his Bram Stoker's Dracula co-star Winona Ryder; after taking part in a wedding scene with a Romanian priest for the film, they still call each other "husband and wife" when speaking personally.

However, this has been significantly embellished; Reeves negotiated a smaller deal, relinquishing his contractual right to a percentage of the sequels' profits in exchange for a more extensive special effects budget.

[272][273] After filming John Wick: Chapter 4, Reeves, Chad Stahelski and Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor Dave Camarillo, signed an exclusive training uniform that was put up for auction in March 2023 to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

[280] In 2022, Reeves's recitation of the Beat poem "Pull My Daisy" for a virtual benefit concert for Tibet House US, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, angered Chinese nationalists.

[317] A popular meme asserts that Reeves is "secretly immortal" and has lived throughout the last millennia under the identities of several historical figures, including Charlemagne and French actor Paul Mounet.

[329] In September 2021, Tae Kwon Do Life Magazine deemed Reeves the "#1 Martial Arts movie star in the world" based upon his multiple films in the genre, their popularity, and sheer box office gross.

[330] In 2024, Gold House honored him on its Most Impactful Asians A100 list,[331] and he was presented with the Inkpot Award for Lifetime Contributions to Movies, TV, Comics, and Books at San Diego Comic-Con.