Rated PG-13 for some sexual references
103 Minutes

Directed and Written By: Micheal Gondry
Staring: Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Melanie Diaz, Ivan Gooch, and Sigourney Weaver

I will shoot you. And I know robot karate! -Jerry

Synopsis

A man whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend’s video store. In order to satisfy the store’s most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films.

Review

Be Kind Rewind was a strange, yet entertaining, and sweet film about……..well…..movies…and stuff.  Michael Gondry is the party responsible for this original screenplay and peculiar delivery.  It’s only fitting the director and co-writer of a film like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind be the mastermind for such a bizarre concept.  It’s a mystery where his unique ideas come from or how he organizes the thoughts into such appealing stories.

The premise and everything about Be Kind Rewind doesn’t really fit into our natural world.  It is essentially a capricious idea that is entirely implausible, yet somehow Gondry again shows us that the impossible can easily be accepted in the right frame of mind.  The film is equipped with a cast that works, and a story that supports itself well enough to believe it.  How otherwise are we going to believe a guy got magnetized and then erased an entire stores tapes blank?  Then the guys make their own shorter versions of these films, that they call “Sweded” and suddenly are in high enough demand that people are crossing state borders?  For VHS no less?  The concept is nonsensical, but in Gondry’s world anything is possible!

The only truly despicable part about the film was Jack Black.  It was a 50/50 chance whether or not he’d have you laughing or rolling your eyes.  He’s proven to me on enough occasions that he has the ability to be funny, so long as he doesn’t get in his own way, and unfortunately like his character Jerry, Jack Black got in his own way and possibly many others.  Mos Def played nicely opposite him, as the calmer and more serene of the two.  When Melanie Diaz entered the film, she created a new chemistry between them that elevated the movie to a different level.  Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, and the surprise of Sigourney Weaver (did this have something to do with the Ghostbuster remake?) played great character’s with clever performances.

While the story is amusing it’s not the kind of humor that will have you laughing hysterically throughout.  The best part of the movie was the re-makes and the creativity that was required to make them plausible.  The “Sweded” Ghostbusters was the highlight of the film.  Frankly, I might have paid $10 to have seen the full twenty minutes of “Sweded” Ghostbusters, which in my thoughts is what makes the rest of the movie so believable.

Utter nonsense was Be Kind Rewind, but entertaining and enjoyable in spite of it’s strangeness.  To have something so different from now comedies are structured today was a breath of fresh air.  Even in the moments of the films utmost conflict there was still a hopeful and pure sense that offered calamity rather than tension.  There was no official resolve in it’s finale, and some of it’s intentions are unclear.  In general it leaves it up to your own interpretation.  I’m thankful to having a movie that made me laugh and let me do my own thinking.  The Verdict?  I thoroughly enjoyed this oddball comedy.

Popularity: 1% [?]