Ten Dollar Ticket: Be Kind, Rewind
by James T. Tynion
Monday March 24, 2008
I’ve always been a fan of Michel Gondry, and when I first saw the trailers for his newest film, Be Kind Rewind, I was excited. The movie puts Mos Def and Jack Black together as clerks at a local video store, who end up re-filming numerous hit films so they don’t lose the business. It’s an amusing premise, if not a bit cliché. This is the most mainstream Gondry’s work has ever been, and having seen it, I must say that this direction does not suit his work.
Be Kind Rewind is not a bad movie, but it certainly isn’t a good movie. It demonstrates this in the first half-hour when the ridiculous premise of the film comes into play. Jack Black’s character is meant to be a bit of a paranoid schizophrenic, a character almost indistinguishable from every other character he has ever played. Because of this insane paranoia, Black wants to break into a power plant, and ends up zapped by more electricity than any human could ever handle. This leaves him magnetized, which leads to the erasing of all the tapes at the store, which is necessary for the rest of the film to happen. The trouble is that this isn’t your typical Gondry surrealist story. It seems pretty rooted in the real world, and nobody could possibly survive this magnetization process. It was hard for me to let go of this as the movie continued, and I still believe that there must have been a much less ridiculous way for them to have achieved their goal.
Once they get past the set-up, the movie is allowed to get down to the concept that made me want to see the movie in the first place. The fake movies are hilarious, and watching them get made is definitely the highlight of the film. This is also where we see the heart of the film, these people coming together to create something beautiful, and eventually, something entirely new.
It can be moving at times, especially with the growing relationships between Mos Def, Jack Black, and the girl from the dry cleaning place across the street. The trouble with the movie is that for every legitimately moving scene, there are five scenes that try to be moving, and fail. This continues to the ending, which leaves you with a good feeling until you realize that nothing really happened. The ending makes both sides of the conflict neutral, but everybody still loses, and not in a clever sort of way. This is a disappointing film from a great filmmaker. If you keep that in mind should you choose to check it out, hopefully you won’t be let down.
