A one-joke premise it may be. But the central joke in Be Kind Rewind has lots of funny variations.
A shaggy dog fable it may also be. But this is one frisky, adorable puppy, one you want to embrace, take home from the pound, and adopt. And I’m not just trying to be kind.
“Be Kind: Rewind.” That’s what video stores used to request of their regular customers. As for the Be Kind Rewind video store that comprises the central location in this aggressively quirky lark, it’s headed the way of the dinosaur.
Jack Black plays an eccentric Passaic, New Jersey mechanic who’s certain that microwaves in the nearby power plant are killing him. He tries to sabotage the plant, gets caught in an electromagnetic field, and ends up magnetized. Then he walks into the local video store that lends the film its name, managed by his lifelong buddy, played by Mos Def. It’s a modest operation stocking only VHS tapes that’s struggling againt the West Coast Video chain, with its newfangled DVDs.
Sure enough, he inadvertently erases the entire inventory of movies in the store. In order to satisfy the store’s most loyal customer, an aging woman with signs of dementia played by Mia Farrow, the two friends grab a camcorder and some props and set out to “swede” – that is, remake but in custom-made fashion, as if imported from Sweden – many of the lost films, including Ghostbusters, The Lion King, Robocop, Back to the Future, Rush Hour 2, Last Tango in Paris, and Driving Miss Daisy.
Paging Ed Wood…
And who’s to play all the characters in all these movies? Why, the two of them, of course, with dry cleaner employee Melonie Diaz recruited for the female roles. Suddenly Be Kind Rewind has turned into Be Fake Remake.
Given the extent of their resources and the level of their talent, the partners in grime and their desperate scam and coverup will certainly be seen through by store owner Danny Glover, who’s faced with the possibility of demolition of the store, and railed against immediately by indignant patrons, right?
Wrong: The viewers like their low-budget remakes – each of which runs 20 minutes (!) – which become local word-of-mouth hits.
The wannabe moviemakers thus become neighborhood celebrities and then, as if prophesying the eventual existence of YouTube, they begin casting their enthusiastic friends and neighbors in their cheesy movies.
But not everyone is so appreciative. Certainly not Hollywood lawyer Sigourney Weaver, who shows up with charges of intellectual property theft and copyright infringement, and demands that all the tapes be destroyed.
For writer-director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Human Nature, Block Party), Be Kind Rewind is a characteristically whimsical comedy – part satire, part slapstick, part screwball farce, and part fairy tale – that’s almost nostalgic for the VCR/VHS technology that has been declared obsolete only recently, however long ago it might seem.
It’s also nostalgic for the low-tech and non-tech aspects of filmmaking and movie-watching that make both activities magical in the first place.
And although patches of it are as much funny-peculiar as funny-haha, the sequences involving movie remaking are occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious. But oddball charm is the real stock in trade, and it’s here in abundance.
Black is more than happy to swing for the broad-comedy rafters, as is his wont, and Def contributes a complementary performance that’s wonderfully low-key: He’s a natural. They’re a fun tandem to watch.
So we’ll fast-forward to 3 stars out of 4 for a fanciful fable about remakers of lost art that celebrates seat-of-the-pants creativity and we’re-all-in-this-together community in an endearing and amusing way.
Be Kind Rewind is a goofy, touching love letter to the emotion fixtures we call motion pictures.
Hey, for a movie lover, what’s not to like?
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