Be Kind Rewind

DETAILS:
Released - 22 February 2008
Certificate - 12A
Running Time - 97mins
Director/Screenwriter - Michel Gondry
Producers - Georges Bermann, Julie Fong
Cinematography - Ellen Kuras
Editing - Jeff Buchanan
Music - Jean-Michel Bernard
Theatrical distributor - Pathé
Country - USA


SYNOPSIS:
Elroy Fletcher (Danny Glover) is the proprietor of a failing Video rental store. On the verge of his business folding he must quickly raise enough money to keep it afloat. When he leaves town for a few days to do some market research he reluctantly leaves Mike (Mos Def) in charge. This soon turns to disaster when Mike’s idiotic friend Jerry (Jack Black) accidently wipes all the tapes clean after a bizarre encounter with the local power plant. In an attempt to restore all the tapes content Mike and Jerry film their own shoddy remakes of each film. Surprisingly the store starts to gain a profit as all the locals lap up the duo’s comic take on Hollywood movies. But this soon starts to gain too much attention as the evil copyright authorities grab a hold of the situation.

REVIEW:
It is of little importance when a comedy film has little artistic or innovative value, as long as the film is sufficiently amusing and entertaining, what more could you ask for? Therefore I walked into the cinema thinking that Gondry’s directional talents and love of cinema mixed with Black’s natural talent for comic performing could possibly make Be Kind Rewind the Manhattan or This is Spinal Tap of our generation. This sadly, is not the case. For a comedy film, Be Kind Rewind is just simply not funny. Gondry is a victim of his own failed script as the simple plot is too long and drawn out lasting for an unwelcomed one-hundred minutes. It is a fairly simple story to establish and most people are familiar with the basis of the plot anyway so why Gondry chooses half the films running time to set up the basic events is beyond me. We understand that the stores tapes have been wiped, move on. By the time Black and Def have finally started ‘Sweding’ tapes into their own comical remakes the film is almost over. It is through these remakes that we see little glimpses of Gondry’s directorial talent through his minimalist inventiveness. A pizza jump-cut behind someone’s head to replicate a gunshot and people spinning on top of children’s road maps to portray the feel of falling from a great height are fairly amusing. Black's impersinations of Jackie Chan and Jessica Tandy are also amusing but very brief. To people other than film buffs these in-jokes and movie spoofs will more than likely fall on deaf ears.

It is not only the script but the talents of the cast which holds a comedy film together. The acting here is far too bland. With a severe lack of sharpness and wit in their dialogue no chemistry is sparked between Black and Def and such a dire script leaves them little room to improvise. In the future Gondry should leave his scripts to Charlie Kaufmann. This film seemed to have potential but in the end the talent on board was wasted in this predictable rubbish. If Be Kind Rewind was released a decade earlier it may have had more resonance when the transition from VHS to DVD was first imminent, but the film’s message has little meaning in this current day and age.

When the credits finally reach the screen we are given an e-mail address to watch the comical remakes in full. I urge anyone thinking of seeing this film to go to http://www.bekindmovie.com/ instead. The little humour featured in the film can be seen here and will save you the price of a cinema ticket and inconvenience as there little point in making such an effort.

TO SUM UP:
Once you have sat through the utter bore that is Be Kind Rewind you will wish that its memory was wiped from your brain along with the tapes in Fletcher’s store.