BE KIND REWIND Partizan Films
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: C+
Directed by: Michel Gondry
Written By: Michel Gondry
Cast: Jack Black Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Melonie Diaz
Screened at: IFC, NYC, 2/23/08
Opens: February 22, 2008 Here is a question to ponder. How do you make a film about boring people without producing a boring film? And one more relevant to Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind,” How do you make a film about the work of amateur film-makers without the film’s being amateurish? As for the second, it is indeed possible, as many critics have praised “Be Kind Rewind,” while others more cautiously damn it with faint praise by calling it a cult film. (Cult can be defined in this regard as something popular or fashionable among a particular section of society). I did not feel too cultish, as “Be Kind Rewind” was not kind to my funny-bone at all. Gondry is best known for his 2004 film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” not a cult film but an Oscar-winning imaginative exercise about a man who learns that his ex-girlfriend has had him literally erased from her memory. As he starred Jim Carrey in the lad role, he places Jack Black in the same position in this new production. Both comedians are famous for their off-the-wall depictions, though Carrey is easier to look at, easier to take. In “Be Kind Rewind,” Jack Black stars as Jerry, an eccentric resident of Passaic, New Jersey, the home of jazz pianist, composer and entertainer Fats Waller (1904-1943). Waller’s celebrity status is exploited by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) who owns a video rental store supposedly on the site of Waller’s birth. Jerry hangs out with the store’s only employee, Mike (Mos Def) to Fletcher’s dismay, the bad vibes justly felt when trailer-living Jerry is certain that the power plant nearby is affecting his brain. He climbs over the fence to dismantle the plant but is driven back by a powerful electric shock that magnetizing his brain. When Jerry returns to the store, which is called Be Kind Rewind, the magnetic field with which he is charged erases all the videotapes, leaving dismayed customers with static instead of movies. Before Fletcher is to return from a trip he had taken to a conference celebrating Fats Waller, Mike must figure out a way to restore customer confidence in the store. He gets together with Jerry remake movies like “Robocop,” “Carrie,” and “Ghostbusters,” using dime-store costumes and props. To their amazement, lines form outside the shop as folks prefer these new movies to the established ones. Soon all the neighborhood takes part as cast members, a feeling of solidarity emerges, as folks who might at best talk to one another about the weather are deeply immersed in the project. The premise is a good one: another version of “why can’t we all get along.” This time, writer-director Gondry might even imply that if only Bush and Ahmadinejad together with Olmert and Ismail Wahania got together to make movies, world peace would follow. However, despite a heartwarming performance by Mia Farrow as eccentric customer Miss Falewicz and a villainous turn by a Hollywood lawyer played by Sigourney Weaver, “Be Kind Rewind” as a whole is as ill-disciplined as the would-be film-makers who presumably could churn out a new “Gone With the Wind” in two hours flat. It plays like a series of skits rather than a unified whole, not necessarily a thumbs-down concept per se, but skits which become redundant and sciolistic. Rated PG-13. 100 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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