Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind” is a curious and strange film insofar that its greatest strengths – his fierce imagination – become its biggest weakness here. Let’s start off with Emmanuel Levy’s mostly-apt synopsis. “Arguably the weakest and silliest of Gondry’s films, this one-note comedy is basically a short stretched to the limits of a feature-length movie that even reliable pros like Jack Black can’t rescue.”
This mostly nails it except that it’s not “arguably” Gondry’s weakest film, it’s easily his weakest, Jack Black is certainly not a “reliable pro” (more like a tired, one trick pony) and yet ‘Rewind’s does skate by a little bit on its charms and sincerity.
There’s a film line between inventive absurdism (ala the Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze, Gondry Bermuda triangle) and just nonsensical silliness, and from the getgo, ‘Rewind’ announces itself as born from the latter breed. Jack Black does his now-insufferable rubber-faced bufoon routine (whiteface?), clowning around as an unfunny mechanic who lives in a trailer nearby a power-plant and can’t help but pester the shit out of his dim-witted (mildly retarded?) VHS store clerk friend Mos Def on a daily basis (these two ‘heroes’ are hapless to an infuriating level).
The store is owned by the jazz-loving, Fats Waller devotee Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) who refuses to leave behind the anachronistic world of VHS tape for the modern world of DVDs and as a result sees his business hanging by a thread. Fletcher incidentally will tell anyone who will listen that the building that he lives in and houses his ‘Be Kind Rewind’ video store was once the home to his hero Waller.
A Waller convention precipitates Mr. Fletcher’s absence from the store for a few days which lends itself perfectly for Black’s bumbling character to fuck everything up. Some half-assed scheme drives him to plan a sabotage against the powerplant and during his hair brained raid he becomes magnetized, eventually ruining all the VHS tapes in the store Mos Def has been entrusted to run while the owner is away. It’s rushed, bumbling elements like these that illustrate Gondry’s desire to just get the show on the road and forgo any remotely plausible set-up. The premise is all but a paper-thin, ridiculous launching pad to get the story started.
Moreover, the hurried approach is also felt in the tone, editing and structure. The film’s first half feels like it is haphazardly slapped together with construction tape, glue and pipe-cleaners – appropriate thematically perhaps, but as an experience it feels shoddy and strewn together.
So it begins idiotically absurd and tests the limits of suspending ones disbelief, even for a silly little comedy. When angry customers discover the movies they have rented are fucked, and widespread animosity towards the business begins to spread, the duo then hastily begin to “Swede” all the destroyed video tapes in the movie – sweding being the process of recreating something from scratch using common, everyday materials and technology.
These cheap-ass creations are cute and mildly amusing, but hardly the fantastically funny send-ups you might imagine and then the film prattles on like this, one silly remake after another with members of the Passaic, New Jersey town slowly joining the fold helping the pair act, shoot and create these pathetic, but winsome fabrications. The town impossibly catches on to these sweded remakes and they become a minor must-have hit around the neighborhood with the duo and their film partner (the ambrosial Melonie Diaz) taking ‘sweded’ requests at $20 a pop.
This is all threatened by Sigourney Weaver, who plays a bitch studio lawyer seeking to wipe out the business’ existence if they don’t destroy all these copyright infringing films.
And around this halfway mark of the film, something happens, and the film’s handcrafted guilelessness starts to make some emotional headway darting dangerously close to heartwarming, mainstream film territory, but registering sincerity and emotion nonetheless.
What begins as a silly, ideally clever meta idea slowly evolves itself into being something deeper – a earnest love letter not only to movies, but Fats Waller, the community of Passaic, NJ – (community in general) and the Do It Yourself (DIY) spirit and aesthetic. The film starts to sprout a heartwarming underdog quality that’s genuinely endearing and charming if not also very sentimental and saccharine. But it’s something.
The homespun idea of making your own art, even with the most crude and limited means begins to feel heartfelt and perhaps a little cheesy, and the film finally moves beyond an excuse for a cinematic nostalgia jerkoff. It’s almost like that part when watching the Special Olympics and all of sudden you’re not laughing at them and cheering those little guys on. You have to be a strong cynic (and perhaps not a true lover of films, which is nicely conveyed near the end) to completely hate on the film’s softer endgame tone.
Of course, by the time this part of the film rolls around, it’s certainly a little too late to totally salvage it, but the unironic, scruffy, and winning can-do spirit is a sweet note to leave off on, even if yes, it’s Gondry’s most commercial, most MOR and weakest film to date. [B-]
Postscript: someone please throttle Jack Black, make sure Michel Gondry writes more than one draft of his next script and perhaps strongly encourage that he balance his ridiculous ideas with some anchor (preferably one by the name of Charlie Kaufman). If someone would grade this film a C+ or lower we wouldn’t fight them on it. Also our hunch is despite the outward mainstream appeal of this film, it’s neither going to draw in a larger base or please his hipster constituency and the film is going to be left out in the cold at the box-office.