Friday, February 22, 2008

Movie review: Be Kind Rewind

To swede or not to swede? (Got $20?)

By John P. Meyer

The movie Be Kind Rewind asks a lot of its viewers, just as the fictional video store of the same name (situated in scenic downtown Passaic, NJ) does of its patrons.

Alma, Jerry and Mike: performers, producers, video store clerks

In the case of the sadly outdated video store - operated by kindly Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) using an antiquated inventory of actual tapes instead of newer, more user-friendly DVDs - those returning their movies are asked to rewind them. In the case of the movie, what's asked of viewers is that they suspend their sensible disbelief in regard to matters electrodynamic, and then entertain the notion that Joe Citizen will be entertained by the amateurish (if wildly creative) filmmaking undertaken by Jerry (Jack Black) and Mike (Mos Def), who're watching the store while Mr. Fletcher is away on a business trip.

Rewind a bit: business owner Fletcher, on the point of departing by train, has just remembered to tell store clerk Mike to keep Jerry out of the store while he's gone: Fletcher abides and probably even likes Jerry (who works - and lives - in a junkyard across the street from the video store), but he recognizes in him a strong proclivity for inadvertent (yet no less damaging) destruction. In other words, Jerry's a royal screwup. And so, as the train door automatically slides closed, Fletcher attempts to get the message to Mike by scrawling it on the window's condensation. Of course, to Mike it appears backwards (something like "erots eht fo tou yrrej peek," but with the font inverted), conveying to Mike only that his respected role model/father figure must in fact be illiterate.

Driving Miss Daisy: take one

This would have been good advice to follow, because shortly thereafter Jerry pays a visit to the store following an aborted guerrilla mission aimed at shutting down the power transmission station bordering his travel trailer residence. And - see - he's been zapped by a gazillion watts and has become hyper-bio-magnetized, so that when he enters the store and prowls the aisles, helpfully straightening the inventory, all semblance of coherent content (assuming there was any to begin with) contained on the videotapes is neutralized. Zapped. Deleted. Hello, static!

Panicked, Mike and Jerry decide to at least take care of the store's most regular customer, Miss Falewicz (Mia Farrow, aging extremely gracefully, I must say), by promising that her selected rental will be ready for pickup by close of business day.

Since the store copy of Ghostbusters has irretrievably gone where the goblins go, Mike and Jerry - knowing that Miss Falewicz hasn't seen the film - imagine they can get away with grabbing up a VHS videocam and recreating the movie by acting out the roles and filming the story themselves. Leading to the employment of incredibly cheesy, yet extremely clever low-tech devices and effects.

Jerry gets my nod for "Best Performance by an Actor Not Named Peter Weller in a Robocop Costume"

Bottom line: while neither Miss Falewicz nor her nephew and his street-wise buds are fooled by the resulting 20-minute opus to low-budget low-brow reenactment, they are nevertheless charmed by its zany creativity and enthusiastic performances. (As are we, to an extent.)

Thus begins a word-of-mouth campaign leading to such burgeoning popularity of their output that the pair of street corner filmmakers are forced to continue remaking the store's catalog of magnetically-wiped-clean videos.

When the requirement surfaces for a female player, Mike and Jerry recruit Alma (Melonie Diaz), whom they solicit away from her sister's dry cleaning establishment both to perform before the camera and act as production assistant behind it. It is Alma (while serving a stint behind the store counter - and wearing the hand-lettered company t-shirt to good effect) who coins the term "sweded" to explain to a customer the difference between their version of Robocop and the one produced by Hollywood.

Soon, there's a line of cineasts waiting outside the store for the chance to have their favorite action-adventure or comedy (or feel-good socially-conscious drama, such as Driving Miss Daisy) "sweded" by the Be Kind, Rewind crew. Turnaround: one business day; cost: 20 bucks.

Everything goes swimmingly until Big Corporate shows up in the person of Ms. Lawson (Sigourney Weaver) and her legal minions, who calculate that copyright damages owed the various studios amount to something over a billion dollars at this point. Which puts a quick kibosh on the entire entrepreneurial undertaking.

Driving Miss Daisy: take two

There's a bit of backstory involving Fats Waller and his close ties to Passaic in general and the building occupied by Be Kind, Rewind in particular, but rather than diverting onto that sidetrack I'll simply say that this subject matter is used by the growing ranks of neighborhood filmmakers as the basis of their first entirely original filmed production.

Director/writer Michel Gondry once again demonstrates an ability to bring freshness to the business of movie-making. If there's something slightly less satisfying about this film when stacked up against Gondry's exceptional previous outings (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep) - and I think there is - it's that it's missing the poignancy and sweet sadness of those stories. Be Kind, Rewind is both clever and fresh - but it plays out entirely in the shallow end of the thematic pool.

BIGGEST THREAT TO PASSAIC COMMUNITY FILMMAKING ENDEAVOR: Jack Black in blackface

NOT APPROVED BY PASSAIC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: "The only reason anybody's here is that they have no place to go." - Jerry

CUE THE VIOLINS: "The entire industry is crumbling due to piracy and bootlegging." - Ms. Lawson

Related stories

• Lone Star Film Fest announces competition winners, honorees (Nov. 16, 2008)
• New on DVD: Be Kind, Rewind, Chaos Theory and Fool’s Gold (June 17, 2008)
• Week in View: Leap Day Edition (Feb. 28, 2008)

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• Arts > Movies / Film > Mainstream Movies