Review: Be Kind Rewind (2008)

Be Kind Rewind
reviewed by Sam Osborn of TheMovieMammal.com

We all have a place to rent movies. Our place to rent movies. My
place, The Video Station, is a two floor monolith of titles, where the
browsing of films is discouraged by the sheer volume of shelves. You
stand the chance of getting lost; and it's better just to ask. And so
you approach the filmic lotuses crouching behind their counter, where
they await any customer upon whom they can drop some prodigious film
knowledge. Be Kind Rewind, Michel Gondry's follow-up to 2006's Science
of Sleep, is the swan song of this dying tradition. In fact, Mr.
Gondry laments the diminishment of many traditions here. His film is a
ballad to the Video Station, to Jazz music, to independent filmmaking,
DIY community artistry, and to the VCR. It seems ironic then, that in
order to make such a loaded film, Gondry went through Hollywood for
distribution, cast Jack Black and Mos Def instead of local actors from
his New Jersey set, and will obviously capitulate to a DVD transfer
and rental through Netflix and Blockbuster when Be Kind Rewind is
released for home viewing.

But maybe Gondry isn't bothering to make a statement. In the way
George A. Romero's loaded his recent Diary of the Dead with statements
that fold and re-fold the film's meaning until it disappears into
parody, Be Kind Rewind may simply be harking to a folk art culture of
Gondry's own invention. His methods are, in the present age of
filmmaking, especially unique to Hollywood directors. (And let's not
be fooled, by working through Warner Brothers, Focus Features, and now
New Line Cinema, Mr. Gondry is now a Hollywood director.) Largely
ignoring CGI wizardry, he champions the arts & crafting of his set
designers and prop masters; his special effects are nearly all
achieved through in-camera trickery, and his sets are crazed and
original enough to be displayed in their own Manhattan art gallery. Be
Kind Rewind allows him to cut and paste and re-invent household
objects to his heart's delight, as an entire scene is dedicated to
showing off all the crew's cracked brilliance.

Paper Mache can't hold a film together, though, and it seems Gondry
hasn't put his ingenuity towards storytelling. In an attempt to
sabotage his local power plant, which he believes to be controlling
his mind, Jerry (Jack Black), a deadbeat loner, manages to permanently
magnetize his globular body. And so when he visits his friend Mike
(Mos Def), the sole employee of Be Kind Rewind Video, he erases all
the store's tapes. With the boss out of town and only four hours to
obtain a copy of Ghostbusters for a nosy customer (Mia Farrow), the
pair elect to remake the film themselves, employing the help of the
town's auto mechanic and dry cleaner.

Their remakes, which work like lovingly cobbled YouTube creations,
gain popularity in their Jersey village and soon are at high demand
for $20 a rental. Thrown in for sentimentality's sake, Be Kind
Rewind's owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), needs to raise $60,000 to
avoid the building's demolition. If his business is put down, the Be
Kind Rewind family and much of the community will be relocated to the
projects to make way for luxury condo units.

Gondry first took a stab at feature-length scriptwork with Science of
Sleep. He banked off the memory riffs laid out by Charlie Kauffman in
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, echoing them with his own
hero's dreams. Be Kind Rewind, Gondry's second full-length writing
feat, departs entirely from these imaginative fancies for something
more scattered and pockmarked. He's tangential as ever, wandering
through mind-controlling power plants to the birthplace of Fats
Waller, as though in an attempt to avoid the otherwise saccharine
plotline.
www.TheMovieMammal.com