Be Kind Rewind

I had really high hopes for this film, being that I am a big fan of Eternal Sunshine, and I went in assuming Michel Gondry had done something similar: an exciting, visually stimulating, emotional and comical experience. Instead, Be Kind Rewind delivers minimally on all four fronts.

The heart of the movie is the art direction that always marks a Gondry production, including interesting film tricks and the use of props and sets that appear used and a little dirty. There are two essential elements here: the background of Passaic, New Jersey, and the home movies that drive the plot. Passaic is portrayed as an urban city with a suburban main street quality, and Gondry does a good job of making his own little universe with its own social order (think: Royal Tenenbaums). The home movies are a collection of amusing, papier-mache, junkyard, Cliffs Notes versions of real movies, like Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, and 2001. They are creatively put together, and look great despite the fact that the characters have no apparent way of editing the material. These short bits are pretty much the sole selling point of the film -- the majority of humor and art are contained in them.

On the other hand, the story is kind of a let down. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie. Jack Black gets electrocuted during a botched attack on a power plant, and as a result gets charged with static electricity (or something) that causes him to turn magnetic and erase all the tapes in the video store. The owner of the shop (Danny Glover) is out of town and so Black and Mos Def are forced to reshoot movies so the patrons won't report them (the process of reshooting the movies is called "sweding," as in the country, Sweden -- they explain that it's a new foreign filming technique) .

Unexpectedly, the movies become big hits, and before you know it, everyone in town is acting in them, and people will pay any price to rent the flicks. Then there is a "we have to raise enough cash to prevent them from evicting us" storyline, and a "corporate big-wigs confiscate the tapes because of copyright violations" storyline, finishing with a "everyone gets together to make it happen" crescendo. Unfortunately, there is nothing new or interesting in the narrative, and the characters are all pretty two-dimensional. Additionally, there is a constant barrage of Fats Waller nostalgia that pervades the story, but it seems forced and unnatural. As a result of all these flaws, the story is overly sentimental and yet not relatable.

But don't get me wrong, it was still enjoyable. There were laughs and sighs, and the "sweded" movies were cute. But I wanted something novel to shout out at me. I guess I just expected too much.