BE KIND REWIND
Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep), his latest whimsical affair Be Kind Rewind is his silliest and most confused feature yet. And it pains me to say it too because I've loved the idea for this movie for so very long. The idea that two guys come up with a plan to remake the entire video store collection themselves after they accidentally erase the footage on all the tapes is a really interesting one and I had really high hopes for it with the always inventive director on board. I was expecting the High Fidelity of movie fandom but sadly Gondry has executed the neat premise in a boring, and repetitive manner... probably himself wishing that just like his leads Jerry (Jack Black) and Mike (Mos Def) he could deliver a 20 minute movie and we would all go home happy. That's basically what the film turns into, a really good a 20-30 minute short film before Gondry either gets bored with the premise or runs out of ideas, and goes off on his own tangent much like he did with The Science of Sleep, showing us he is maybe better working from other people's scripts. His writing just gets shoddy here. Secondary characters seem to float in and out of the film with no purpose or imagination, even sub-plots are brought in and left unfinished. At one point Sigourney Weaver walks into the film wearing a business suit and claims $3 billion in copyright damages for the store profiting on remakes of their movies without permission, probably pissed because the guys remade her movie Ghost Busters without asking her if she wanted a part in it. For a movie billed by it's trailers as a laugh a minute comedy, the movie just isn't really that funny and you could feel the audience struggling to keep their interest when it went for the overly sentimental note and to put it bluntly, when the guys aren't goofing around with the camera remaking films it's just a load of crap. When Jack Black's remaking Robocop and Ghost Busters it's just about the funniest thing you'eve ever seen but everything else makes you wanna tear your eyes out and your left wondering how such an inventive film-maker could produce such cliche and boring drivel. I mean believe it or not, at one point you have Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), the store owner of this worse for wear video store doing research at other video stores, taking notes on why the big chain retail stores have tons of customers and it's just so boring, you can't believe what you are really watching is coming from Gondry. Black and Def have some great chemistry together, even if we've seen Jack Black play this character a hundred times before. Def is an interesting actor, he reminds me a lot of Michael Cera in that he just seems to be so comfortable in his character's shoes that you truly believe that is him. He makes you believe he is simply playing himself. The cinematography from Ellen Kuras is superb, the movie has a beautiful but gritty style to it and just as he did with Eternal Sunshine, his work blends in really well with Gondry. You can't help but just fall in love with how these guys work together but again, it's three negative responses from me to Gondry's work. Be Kind Rewind's second act just floats in the air with the odd distraction trying to keep our interest and filling time until we get to the Frank Capra ending, which this film didn't really earn. I didn't buy the social commentary that was injected into the piece and I think Gondry's ambitions were way too high with this picture and it would have been just a full out comedy about guys remaking the movies they love... I think he could have had a big hit here.
rating: 2.5