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Movie review: ‘Be Kind Rewind’
By admin | February 23, 2008
Be Kind Rewind
Directed by Michel Gondry
Partizan
Rating: 4
Michel Gondry’s newest work, Be Kind Rewind, is a shamelessly feel-good film encased within the witty dialogue and whimsical camera work that defines Gondry’s style.
The movie’s heart and soul is the Be Kind Rewind video store, owned by Mr. Fletcher (Morgan Freeman). When the store starts to lose money to the corporate DVD rental place down the block, Freeman decides to research other video stores and leaves Mike (Mos Def) in charge of the video store. When Mike’s best friend Jerry (Jack Black) attempts to sabotage a nearby power plant (he thinks it’s controlling his brain) all the store’s VHS videotapes are erased. In a panic, Mike and Jerry decide to remake the erased movies themselves, half-heartedly hoping customers won’t notice. It’s a brilliant concept for a movie and allows Gondry to cleverly (and hilariously) reinterpret classics like Ghostbusters and Robocop through his characters’ handheld video cameras.
As with Gondry’s previous efforts (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) the movie requires us to suspend our disbelief in quite a few ways. When customers start returning Mike and Jerry’s 
homemade remakes with rave reviews, it’s hard to believe. I wanted to think that the movie’s characters actually liked seeing Jack Black attack an old lady in a Ghostbusters remake - but, in truth, it’s probably wishful thinking. Moreover, Mike and Jerry are best friends. Viewers are never quite sure why they like each other - Jerry is racist and narcissistic, while Mike is adorably innocent and sincere.
Fans of Gondry’s previous efforts may be disappointed by the films strict adherence to standard Hollywood structure, as the plot is predictable and weak. Be Kind Rewind employs every Disney-movie cliché I’ve seen - from cheesy conflict resolutions to feel-good montages and one-dimensional antagonists. Fortunately, Jack Black and Mos Def engage one another well enough that viewers will find themselves caught up in Mike and Jerry’s amusing antics rather than the film’s predictable story.
There’s an amazing amount of precision employed in Be Kind Rewind. All of the movie remakes are witty and entertaining while still managing to appear improvised and spontaneous. Gondry’s cinematography is spot-on yet again, as the movie-making sequences jump skillfully between documenting Mike and Jerry creating their homemade movies and the movies themselves.
As a testament to the film’s finer details, careful viewers will notice that Jerry’s character is modeled after the Shakespearean fool - someone who consistently trips over their words and misuses vocabulary in an entertaining way. Gondry even throws in a Shakespeare allusion as Jerry subsequently argues that The Lion King is based upon a Shakespearean sense of tragedy. Traditionally, a literary fool functions as a subtle teacher, discretely hinting at a work’s crucial features. Be Kind Rewind, however, is no tragedy. It’s a comedy - and clearly a good one. You’d be a fool to think otherwise.
Topics: Film Reviews |