Be Kind Rewind

Michel Gondry’s new picture Be Kind Rewind, an off-beat buddy comedy, stars Mos Def and Jack Black. Mike (Def) is a video store clerk at aging owner Mr. Fletcher’s (Danny Glover) Be Kind Rewind video store, which, located on a decaying Passaic street corner earmarked for development by some white-collar, eminent-domain-trumpeting city official types, is about to go the way that VHS did in a few years ago, despite the fact that Fletcher claims the building was Fats Waller’s home and, as such, should be preserved.

Black’s Jerry, a loony junkyard worker who lives in a trailer directly underneath a power plant and is an unwelcome regular at Be Kind Rewind, enlists Mike to help him sabotage the power plant, which he blames for his massive headaches and the ridiculous metal hats he must wear in a desperate attempt to ward off radiation. Mike flees when the cops come, but Jerry persists and is electrocuted but survives, magnetized and ready to accidentally erase all the tapes in the video store upon his next all-too-unfriendly visit.

When it’s discovered that all the tapes have been erased, Mike, left in charge while Glover’s character stalks around Manhattan casing Blockbusteresque rental chains as if they’re Fort Knox in order to deduce that the DVD is the way to go, decides to remake the movies with Jerry as his lead. From Ghostbusters to Driving Miss Daisy, RoboCop to The Lion King, the amateurs start “Sweding” the erased tapes, remaking the originals with a campy, DIY zeal.  Once Glover returns and the “Sweded” movies become a sensation, here's Sigourney Weaver in an unbilled cameo as a corporate lawyer, come to deliver the copyright infringement, you're-going-to-jail-forever news to the trio and their lovely co-conspirator Alma (Melonie Diaz).

How is a video store in 2007/2008 that only stocks VHS tapes still in existence anyway? Gondry’s comedy is never able to transcend the illogical underpinnings of its plot no matter how much fanciful whimsy the gifted Frenchman and his collaborators can conjure from the settings and the performers. The filmmaker's style and governing preoccupations (the inner workings of memory, nostalgia, and co-dependence, childlike wonder) crash against the verisimilitude of the settings and milieu he’s chosen. It doesn’t seem as if Gondry knew how to anchor the movie to either Mike, Fletcher, or Jerry’s desires or destiny, leading to an abrupt and largely unsatisfying ending, especially for a movie this bent on being upbeat and zany.

                                                              Brandon Harris