Be Kind Rewind

Everyone's had the situation come up where you're excited to see a movie, and you've been looking forward to it for quite a while, and...then you see it and your hopes are shattered. That happened to me last night with Be Kind Rewind. Everything about this movie seemed to be right, at least in theory. All the pieces of the puzzle were there, great director, talented cast, creative story, but nothing came together.

The movie begins with 3 likable guys: Jack Black, Mos Def, and Danny Glover. All live in Passaic, NJ and are connected to a VHS video store named Be Kind Rewind. The store is not doing well and it's building is facing demolishment by the city to make way for a new development. Danny Glover, the store's owner, goes away and leaves it to his only employee, Mos Def, to keep it running smoothly. Things don't go so well however when his best friend played by Jack Black becomes magnetized (long and not interesting story) and erases all the tapes in the store. They then hatch a last minute plan to re film Ghostbusters for a customer thinking she won't know the difference (since she hasn't seen the original). Well, her son sees the film and knows it's not the original (and is only like 20 minutes long) but likes it anyways. And so their businesses new found success begins. Other people begin to flood the store to request remakes of other movies (a process they refer to as sweding the film). Everything seems to be turning around for them until the movie business sues them and abruptly brings their success to an end. They then have to try and make things work again to save the store.

Michael Gondry, the film's writer and director, has some pretty impressive credits to his name. He teamed with Charlie Kaufman on both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Human Nature both of which were quirky and unique and totally awesome. Then he made The Science of Sleep which he also wrote. Now, it was quite weird and I didn't totally love it, but I loved the idea of it and it was definitely different from other movies out there and had something to say. Then comes Be Kind Rewind with a great premise but Gondry really fails to deliver here. He tries to make this movie unique and put his stamp on it and at times he succeeds but mostly just falls flat.

The movie is a mess from start to finish. There's potential for this to be very charming story but there's more focus on the comedy which doesn't seem to cut it the majority of the time. It seems disjointed in terms of the flow of the main story and the only parts of the movie that seem to work are the 'sweded' parts. The sequences of the friends sweding the movies are hilarious especially with the Ghostbusters remake. This is not only the first movie they swede but also the one that we get to witness the most in depth. This part of the movie is a homerun. It's charming to watch these two friends earnestly try to remake this classic so that one of their customers has a movie to watch (mostly so she won't tell the boss that all the movies are screwed up). This scene of the movie had me laughing my ass off...if only the rest of the film had the same effect.

Jack Black is stale. He and Will Ferrell are in the same boat except for the fact that Ferrell is more charming and has wider appeal. That's not to say that Black hasn't been great in some movies, High Fidelity was great as was The School of Rock, but his performance in this movie is absolutely predictable. He doesn't give any more than what we've seen before so it just ends up feeling familiar (and not in the good way). Mos Def is probably the highlight of the movie. He plays the main protagonist, a very lovable loser who's never had anything but nevertheless has a perpetually optimistic attitude. Mos Def becomes his character and that's the difference between him and Black - one is playing a part in the movie and one is playing himself.

All in all, Be Kind Rewind had tremendous potential but wastes most of it and just leaves the viewer with a so-so taste in their mouth. There's nothing at all outstanding about this movie and in fact ends up pretty boring except for the scenes with the friends sweding the movies. The movie's not all bad but it just pales in comparison to what it could/should be.