After a long hiatus, I have returned to the Record with a review of "Be Kind Rewind" Here it is unedited.




The typical conversation you’ll hear in the audience watching a Michel Gondry movie tends to go something like this: Boyfriend: “I don’t understand what the heck is going on.” Girlfriend: “shhhh! You don’t have to, just watch, it’s so meaningful.” Thankfully, though with his latest film, Be Kind Rewind, Gondry has taken a refreshing hiatus from the existential acid trip love story and has made a film whose story and message is as plain and uncomplicated as the New Jersey neighborhood in which it is set.

The film centers around Mike (Mos Def) and Jerry (Jack Black) two lowly video store employees who accidentally magnetically erase every single VHS cassette in the store. After a demanding customer orders a copy of “Ghostbusters”, the two friends scramble to remake their own twenty-minute version of the film in their own neighborhood using a dated video-camera, themselves and other members of the community as actors and homemade special effects (a process they dub “sweding”). Their film becomes an unexpected success and soon, demand is high for “sweded” films from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Driving Miss Daisy.

It should be noted first of all, that Be Kind Rewind is not nearly as funny as its premise suggests. True, each “sweded” film is absolutely hilarious, but Gondry doesn’t spend as much time on these scenes as one would think. It’s too bad since Black and Def are the perfect opposites, and one of the best conceived black guy/white guy duos in a film to date. Black plays his familiar pathetic freneticism with a touch of racial naivete, a brilliant spark to Def’s sensible good-hearted dullard. The “sweded” scenes are killer, especially Driving Miss Daisy which inevitably places Def as Morgan Freeman and Black as Jessica Tandy (cross-dressing and racial awkwardness ensues).

Aside from these few scenes, the film feels a little off-kilter. The dialogue doesn’t appear to be written very precisely (Def and Black often appear to be “riffing” their lines), and the plot is a bit choppy. The film hops genres as the plot elements change abruptly from understated comedy, to science-fiction to social commentary to warm-hearted family film. Audiences expecting a zany Will Ferrell-esque knee-slapper with non-stop laughs will be disappointed. The laughs are there, however. Comedy is a guessing game. Filmmakers are forced to gamble on what will make us laugh, what is fresh and clever and what is trite. Gondry banks on understatement and character comedy akin to Wes Anderson (but a lot less bizarre).

That said, the film ultimately succeeds in commenting on humanity’s desire for community. Gondry’s observation is that a technological age of DVD and internet leaves people longing to “rewind” to simpler, more personable times. Mike and Jerry’s “sweding” business involves their whole community, and is a wonderful picture of humanity’s deep desire to create our own experiences instead of being sold a consumerist package. The film radiates a “homemade” nostalgia which perfectly encapsulates the spirit of today’s “indie” movement of which Gondry is a pioneer. Unlike his previous film, The Science of Sleep, Be Kind Rewind resists reveling in clever camera tricks, animated scribbly line drawings and stop motion animation in favor of delivering a concise message that should resonate with most everyone: In a world of mechanical precision, imperfection is comfortable, familiar and human.