Be Kind Rewind

PARK CITY

Be Kind Rewind is pretty classic Michel Gondry, but with a more realistic slant than much of his past work.

For the most part, it's a very straight forward (albeit quirky) film about an old video store in New Jersey that's seen far better days. They rarely rent more than a few videos a day, much of their business likely having gone to larger chain stores that stock more copies and carry DVD. The building is condemned and is soon to be demolished to make way for condominiums (isn't that always the excuse?). To try and save his store, Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover) goes on a research mission for a week to see what the chains are doing to increase profits and maximize volume. While away, he entrusts the store to the only employee Mike (Mos Def). He's under explicit instructions not to let his crazy friend Jerry (Jack Black), who lives in a trailer at the back of a junkyard a block away, into the store for fear he'll scare away customers and destroy things (Jerry's a bit accident-prone and is always coming up with crazy ideas). Unfortunately, the effective communication of this message gets lost in translation until it's too late to reverse the damage.

After a bit of a slow start, things get interesting when Jerry accidentally erases all of the tapes in the store due to having been magnetized while trying to attack the power substation next to the junkyard. Yeah... just stick with me here... Since the few customers that still frequent the store are becoming irate at having all their rental tapes come up blank, Jerry and Mike hatch a hair-brained idea to shoot their own versions of the films. Since the customers have never seen these movies before, how can they tell the difference, right? Sure the movies are all shot with an ancient VHS camcorder and are only about 20 minutes long, but this might just work. It all starts with a particularly low-budget version of Ghostbusters shot under the gun in about two hours time. This is the kind of film that you may well have made yourself when you were little. Fishing line is used for "floating" objects, tinfoil is used for costumes and pretty much whatever they happen to find lying around becomes used for props, the Ghostbusters car, etc. It's horrifically bad, but incredibly funny. Next up they have to churn out a version of Rush Hour 2, using every trick in the book to recreate the movie as closely as they can remember... using only available settings, objects, costumes and special "effects." Their remade Hollywood "classics" soon become a surprise hit with the neighborhood clientèle, making Mike and Jerry go into full production, ultimately remaking over 200 titles from Driving Miss Daisy, to Robocop, to King Kong. Business is booming! Unfortunately, this cannot be permitted by the Hollywood powers that be, so the friends and the now-returning Mr Fletcher are faced with multiple copyright infringement lawsuits and the loss of the store unless they can come up with a new plan.

Though tedious at various times and perhaps not as comic as it could be, Be Kind Rewind manages to walk a nice balance between being "bad" and really pulling off some beautifully funny moments. Jack Black is just as annoying as he always is, but at least here it totally fits the character. Mos Def is... well... not really anything exciting - unfortunate considering I usually really enjoy him. Gondry's unique visual style comes heavily into play in the various remade films, giving them all a very organic feel as if they really could have been made in someone's backyard ten years ago before computerized video editing became widely available for the average consumer. Expectedly quirky, this is a film that really celebrates the idea of taking a story and shooting it with whatever means you have available - something that's lost on most modern day filmmakers.

You can see some of Jerry and Mike's remade movies at www.bekindrewind-themovie.com