Movie No. 25: "Be Kind, Rewind"

It's almost too easy to rattle off a list of the things wrong with Michel Gondry's let's-remake-all-the-movies-in-the-video-store comedy "Be Kind, Rewind." The central dramatic plot feels more derivative than the remakes the characters create. The dialogue is often so wooden the actors seem as though they're reading from cue cards. Several scenes seem shake-your-head-in-disbelief out of place. And, perhaps worst of all, the film is never quite as funny as you have the feeling it should be.


None of these things, however, is what stands out the most about "Be Kind, Rewind." That would be the fact that, despite all of these factors, Gondry's created a film that's compulsively watchable and frequently moving.


Mos Def's Mike is, in many ways, living life in the past. He spends his days behind the counter at an old mom and pop video store that's never gotten around to getting DVDs, working for his surrogate father figure Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover).

The store is as much a relic as the tapes that it stocks. Its primary promotional gimmick is that depression-era jazz legend Fats Waller was born in the room upstairs. The building itself seems to have been neglected for nearly that long with a roof in dire need of repair and a structure that seems shaky at best.

Other than the rare customer, Mike's only distractions come from the antics of his paranoid friend Jerry (Jack Black), a mechanic whose vision of what his clients' vehicles need differs somewhat from theirs. When Mr. Fletcher leaves and puts him in charge, however, he takes it seriously, seeing it as a chance to prove his worth. That plan, however, goes awry when an accident at a power plant leaves Jerry magnetized, causing him to erase every one of the store's tapes. When one of the store's only regular customers (Mia Farrow) comes in, what are they to do? They try to remake the movie in a couple of hours and hope she doesn't notice. Before they know it, their remakes have developed a massive following, leaving the pair and their leading lady Alma (Melonie Diaz) running ragged trying to get all of them made.

Although the remakes might never be quite as funny as you'd imagine they'd be, particularly with Black involved, there is a certain creative joy in seeing how they remake these classic (and often fairly special-effects laden) films with no time or budget. One scene in which Alma seemlessly shifts between directing about four or five different films is particularly mesmerizing.

More than even these scenes, however, "Be Kind, Rewind" draws its strength from its devotion to the idea of community, of people coming together with a shared purpose to better their shared future. When, in the movie's climactic scenes, the entire neighborhood conspires to rewrite their town's past, they are really telling their own stories, their experiences and dreams, and making a stand that they won't let someone else determine their future either.

There is also a thread running through the film that new and shiny doesn't always mean better, that it is more than simple nostalgia to in some ways mourn the loss of the crumbling neighborhood store, to the death of the "be kind, rewind"-stickered VHS format. New doesn't mean better when the world becomes more impersonal because of it. In the end it's heart that matters.

And such is the case with this film. It might not be as brilliant as Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" or as brilliantly inventive as his "The Science of Sleep," but it has a giant heart that is firmly in the right place. You get the feeling that if there were more movies like "Be Kind, Rewind" instead of ones focused only on blood, brutality and body counts, maybe the world would be, in some small way, a better place. For now, I'm just happy I saw it.

B