Be Kind Rewind

Starring: Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Melanie Diaz, and Mia Farrow

Written & Directed by: Michael Gondry

It is difficult upon first review to describe my feelings about this film. I saw the trailer a few months back and thought the premise, while somewhat unoriginal, could be a riot if done correctly and with Jack Black and Mos Def doing the Sweding (film term for making their own versions of popular movies, then claiming they came from Sweden so they were more expensive and had much longer wait times) I thought it couldn’t lose.

Well, it didn’t lose per se, but it wasn’t what I thought it would be either. I think the main problem of the film is that it doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be. It was marketed as a slapstick, absurd comedy, much like a young Adam Sandler flick…the kind of film that doesn’t really need any degree of realism because the audience will buy just about anything for the laughs. Be Kind Rewind is partially that, although the humor isn’t nearly as over the top as a film like that needs. The “Sweded” movies are pretty funny but they are overall tame.

If the film had committed to that type of movie the reasoning behind the need for Sweding would be much more acceptable. Jack Black’s character (a paranoid who lives in a trailer in the junkyard) believes that the local power plant is messing with people’s brains, so he attempts to sabotage it. During the failed sabotage he gets electrocuted and furthermore magnetized. When he comes into the struggling local mom and pop video store, he ends up erasing all the videos. Maybe I am naive, but are there any more local mom and pop video stores, especially ones that don’t rent DVDs anymore? It would be like having a movie set in the early nineties in a store that rented only Betas. So the whole beginning is preposterous, but it’s something you would look past if it would have committed to be that type of movie.

It doesn’t though. It tries to be quirky. Writer/director Michael Gondy did quirky quite well in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind mainly because the movie was based on such quirkiness. Here it feels forced. It attempts to build a heartwarming lovestory for a community. The combination of the obsession with Fats Waller, a jazz musician supposedly born in the building now occupied by the store, and the condemnation of the property becomes heavy handed at times and unfortunately overdrawn.

The quirkiness goes beyond absurd slapstick and tries to head towards realism, but it’s really too late at that point.

Things take a real serious turn when the government shuts down the Sweded operation for copyright infringment. It seems that business had picked up so much that people were coming from all over to see the Sweded movies. A nice idea, but again, not very likely. Of course, how can the building be saved now?

The end is a heartwarming one to a degree, although it is tinged with a bittersweet overcast, which was not expected. You expect a movie like this one begins to have the Hollywood happy ending. In some ways it is exciting and unique to not get such an ending, but again with the lead in, it seemed off. It certainly may be the director’s intent to challenge archetypes of stories and specifically tried to cross genre’s midstream, but if so, it hurt the overall product by taking this viewer out of the movie even temporarily at times.

The performances vary as Jack Black and Mos Def have a great chemistry. Danny Glover does nothing special as the owner, neither does Mia Farrow as his loyal customer but both are certainly serviceable enough. Melanie Diaz is likable as Black and Def’s partner in crime.

As I end this, I have to say this is exactly the type of movie I want to have a SecondViewing on because my expectations were completely different and certainly may have overshadowed my viewing. I’m interested to go in again with new eyes.

But for now, I have mixed feelings on it but overall enjoyed it so I’ll grade it thus:

C+