Review of Be Kind Rewind (2008) by Gonzalo R — 22 Feb 2010

I love videos. I'm one of those grumpy Luddites who initially turned his nose up at DVDs, and now does the same - purely out of ignorance - regarding Blu-Ray. There's something faithful about a video. It remembers where you left off, you can skip any part of it if you want (including piracy warnings), they're easier to explore than DVDs, and they're more robust and harder to damage, apart from wear and tear over time (which, let's face it, is also an issue with DVD). So Be Kind Rewind, a movie about the homespun joys of video, should be right up my alley.

A number of things prevent it from being so - and prevent it with a resounding thud. The major problem is the script. Michel Gondry is a gifted visualist, no doubt, but he's perhaps better off not writing his own movies. Be Kind Rewind is a corny, mawkish story, relying confidently on the kind of eye-rolling community spirit values that were already getting creaky when Mr Smith went to Washington. It's the kind of movie where, if it had led to a court case, our heroes would point accusingly at the judge, lawyers etc. and say "Perhaps YOU are the real criminals?" It throws logic out the window in the hopes of championing the underdog, but instead I spent the whole movie thinking "this is stupid, and that wouldn't happen.".

The script problems go deeper than that. The pace dawdles, as the film takes twenty-five minutes just to reach the stuff in the trailer. Mike and Jerry (Mos Def and Jack Black) work in a video store, the tapes get erased, they decide to shoot their own short no-budget remakes to replace them, and amazingly the community likes what they make. Some FBI party-poopers show up to complain about copyright - they're only in one scene - and despite being owed billions of dollars they pretty much let our heroes get off. Anyway, the plot takes a lot of arbitrary turns for 90 excruciating minutes, suspending disbelief to breaking point here and there and making great convoluted leaps to keep things going. Bottom line is, it's a slow movie, and that shouldn't be true of anything 90 minutes long. It's also staggeringly unoriginal: the building is condemned, set to be replaced by a soulless condominium, or something, at which our heroes our outraged. Oh, please.

It's just not clear what point the film is trying to make, partly because it's all so dumbfoundingly illogical. Videos are great, sure, but why the hell is Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover) still renting videos? Yeah, it's a quirky thing to do, what with this being set in the present day, but it doesn't appear to be a deliberate thing on his part: Mr Fletcher is (somehow) completely unfamiliar with DVDs, and when the time comes to possibly switch over, despite a lot of sulking, no actual argument is made for why they shouldn't. It is suggested that they also get rid of everything except Action and Comedies, but what's that got to do with swapping videos for DVDs? The movie is a clumsy, all-purpose argument for individuality and quirkiness, but it can't think straight.

Hey, I love videos too, but even I think it's career-suicide to run a store like Be Kind Rewind in 2008. It's also very easy to get hold of replacement videos, but Mike seems to totally run out of ideas after he phones a few buddies hoping to raid their home movie collections. Doesn't anybody have the internet? Seriously, it might have been worth settiing the film around the advent of DVD twelve or so years ago. The whole idea, which is never really clarified as preferring tried-and-tested methods to new ones, as I presume is the intention, would have made more sense that way.

In the end our heroes decide to make a fictional biopic about Fats Waller. The film they make is interspersed throughout Be Kind Rewind, which means you get to watch it about three times: an odd editing decision, presumably intended to make the whole Fats Waller resolution look like it makes sense thematically. Fats Was Born Here is also available to watch on the DVD, but three was my limit, thanks.

Perhaps Gondry needs world-weary cynics like Charlie Kaufman to temper his childish ideas. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, for example, towed a fine line between youthful innocence and the pain of adulthood. The Gondry-scripted Science Of Sleep, however, had its head stuck firmly in the clouds, and ignored any unpleasant issues it kicked up. Be Kind Rewind can't decide if it's about treasuring old values, diversity and individuality, community spirit, low-budget moviemaking or just plain videos. It's here to give us short, one-sentence versions of popular movies, and the rest is just laborious set-up.

So, assuming I can prise myself away from Be Kind Rewind's horribly mangled and muddled script - without even mentioning the unappealing dialogue, almost - what else is wrong with it? Casting, for one thing. Jack Black is at his most irritating here. Jerry is an unpleasant jerk, and he didn't do or say anything that made him endearing to me. Of course, it could just be personal preference, but I spent the whole movie wanting to punch him in the throat. Mos Def is less irritating, but plays the whole movie like a jabbering mental patient. I don't know what the hell he's going for, but he comes across as having severe learning difficulties. Danny Glover isn't bad, although he appears to be wearing a set of lisp-inducing prosthetic teeth. I cannot think of a single reason for that.

It is fun watching Mike and Jerry mangle their favourite movies, but the actual film that surrounds them is far less successful. Whimsical bordering on stupid, it asks us to swallow a lot of dumb conceits, and the pay-off isn't enough to be worth it. Be Kind Rewind was no doubt fun to make, but the process of watching it is a whole different ball game. It strains to make a whole film out of what is essentially one idea, and pads it out with a clusterbomb of undercooked ideals, half-thoughts and vague underdog heroics. The movies they make are only twenty minutes long, which - one of them argues - is apparently all the human attention span can take. Gondry makes a strong case for that particular theory, if nothing else.