Justin does Be Kind Rewind

“I will shoot you. And I know robot karate!”

The Scoop: 2008 PG-13, directed by Michel Gondry and starring Jack Black, Mos Def and Danny Glover.

Tagline: Sometimes the best movies are the ones we make up.

Summary Capsule: Video store clerks accidentally erase tapes, reshoot movies, and get the community together for SapFest 2008.

Justin’s Rating: $6.99 in late fees

Justin’s Review: Most movies are just movies – you take them one at a time, chew them around in your mouth for a bit, and decide whether it’s going to make you hurl or yummy enough to swallow and ask for seconds. But apparently some movies you can’t take on their own merit – they come stamped with the seal of the director, so that you’re watching John Carpenter’s Halloween or Stanley Kubrick’s Piece of Crap. I don’t think normal, everyday people see it like this, but the movie industry just goes bonkers over some directors to the point where it’s a fineable offense in Hollywood to speak against them.

Thank God for Detroit, I guess. This sort of thinking is just an excuse for directors to get lazy and not have to explain themselves – their critics will do that for them, lavishly, and often with sensual back massages.

I found out after seeing this that Be Kind Rewind was actually Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind, and because of that I should be holding it against a completely different standard. Yeah, I never really heard of his name either, but I guess since he’s done Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind he’s become a national treasure (from France).

I don’t doubt that Gondry has a great touch for visual style or a soft heart for moving stories, but his pacing is somewhat off. It’s not anything nearly as funny as the trailer made it out to be — Be Kind Rewind dispenses with humor for more of a tiny slice of New Jersey community, and tries to focus on how a screw-up could bind them all together for good.

The screw-up is when oddball Jerry (Jack Black) accidentally becomes “magnetized” by a massive course of electricity at a transformer station. “Magnetized”, huh? Not “burned from the inside out”? Oh, okay. So Jerry then wanders into his friend’s VHS rental store and accidentally wipes clean all of the tapes.

You may be asking yourself “VHS? In 2008? Is this a retro film?” Not really, dear readers – this is New Jersey. It’s a small community stuck where it is, with Dante and Randal a town over complaining about having to work on their day off.

Jerry and his mealy-mouthed friend Mike (Mos Def) decide the only way they can keep the shop open is to re-record the movies for those people who haven’t seen them and don’t know any better. Hence, the key invention of this movie is born: Sweding. A Sweded film (and this has become somewhat of a pop culture thing on the internet since this movie came out) is a poorly-reenacted cover band copy of the real film, often with innovative, cheesy special effects and props. It also tends to be shorter – in the case of Jerry and Mike, about 20 minutes per film. Yet somehow the movies become a huge success, and people start clamoring for them in small hordes. Will it be enough to save the store from demolition (oh, yeah, the store is about to be demolished, important plot point there)? Will Fats Waller come back from the dead to put things right?

The problem here is that this movie has two completely different audiences. The first are all the Gondry fawning critics, who will just praise this up and down the street until they convince themselves it’s the best film of 2008. Uh, sorry guys, you can have your delusions, but that just ain’t the case.

The second is the trailer-viewing public, who came to see an actual comedy where people “Swede” movies in a loving parody of famous movies. That second crowd is bound to be disappointed; the Sweding thing only takes up a small part of the actual movie (most of it in montages), with the bulk being a non-humorous yet quirky character study of small, run-down town life. Don’t get me wrong, by the end of the movie I kind of warmed up to what it was doing, but Mos Def and Jack Black are so low-key in their performances – a deliberate choice for the role, no doubt – that they just slip under the radar of your interest and pass on by.

I’m not saying that Gondry was under any compunction to deliver a standard Hollywood comedy, but the “comedy” in any form would’ve been a welcome addition. As it is, this seems like a tribute to a long-gone era of some sort, and I’m sorry to say that I’ve already moved on.

Who you gonna call? Anybody but these guys.

Didja Notice?

• Elizabeth Berkley is a girl standing in the library while Jerry and Mike are “sweding” Ghostbusters

• Jack Black starred in the 2005 remake of King Kong as Carl Denham and the 1933 original is sweded (with Black playing the title character). Also, Sigourney Weaver starred in Ghostbusters (the first film sweded) as Dana Barrett but in this film, she plays Ms. Lawson, a government agent sent to destroy the tapes.

Intermission!

In keeping with the spirit of the film, director Michel Gondry “sweded” a version of this movie’s trailer featuring only himself on screen.

Groovy Quotes

Jerry: [sung, poorly, to the tune of the Ghostbusters theme song] When you’re walkin’ down the street…
Jerry: [singing] … and you see a little ghost…
Jerry: [singing] … whatcha gonna do about -
[more out of tune]
Jerry: Ghostbusters?
Mike: What? What is that?
Jerry: That’s the Ghostbusters theme song.
Mike: No.
Jerry: I’m pretty sure it is.

Jerry: [in character, shooting Robocop] I will shoot you. And I know robot karate!

Jerry: [Alma is providing the voices for "The Lion King"] Listen to me. I need to you say the line. I need you to say “I will piss on the bones of your ancestors”…
Mike: No, no! That’s not in the movie!
Jerry: [interrupts] This is the next Lion King. This is Part II.
Alma: Roar! I will piss on the bones of your ancestors!

Jerry: [in character, shooting Robocop] Anything you say can and will be held against you…in the court of Robocop.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Ghostbusters

• Clerks
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind