Be Kind Rewind
by Catherine Lee

At the Be Kind Rewind Video & Thrift Store, the centerpiece of Michel Gondry’s quirky urban fable of a film, Be Kind Rewind, renting a VHS tape costs a dollar. The store, in a rundown neighborhood of Passaic, New Jersey, is the kind of neighborhood store you want to support. It is owned and run by a kind old gentleman, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), who would probably know your name by the second or third time you came by the store.

Mr. Fletcher is a little behind the times. There are no DVDs for his store. He is hanging onto his store as condos sprout up around him. He tells stories about the important history of his building, claiming that Fats Waller was born there. He’s fiercely loyal to his building, his neighborhood, his customers and his employee, Mike. Mike, played by Mos Def, lives above the store, as does Mr. Fletcher, who is practically a dad to Mike. Mike is very loyal to his friend Jerry, a nutty guy who lives in a trailer in the junk yard just down the street from the video store, next to the electrical utility plant that blasts power to all of Passaic. Jerry is played by Jack Black, so it is only a matter of time before the crazy kicks in. Mr. Fletcher tells Mike he’s taking a week-long trip to honor the life of his hero, Fats Waller. What he’s really doing is going on a fact-finding mission to figure out how to transform his store. The city of Passaic is forcing Mr. Fletcher out in the name of progress, unless he can make substantial improvements to the building. They want him out in 60 days and have condemned the building and offered to move him to get him out.

Mr. Fletcher tells Mike to keep Jerry out of the store, but that’s not going to happen. Jerry stages a raid on the power plant, hoping to disable it and keep the electrical waves from invading his head. Instead, he gets zapped so powerfully that when he stops by to visit Mike at the store the electricity coursing through him erases all the videos in the store. Frantic that the slightly addled loyal customer, Ms. Falewicz (a convincing ditzy performance by Mia Farrow), will tell Mr. Fletcher how things are going all wrong in his absence, Mike and Jerry hatch a crazy scheme. They film their own version of Ghostbusters, the film Ms. Falewicz wants to see, hoping a homemade facsimile of the film will satisfy her. Weirdly, it does. And the Mike and Jerry movie-making continues. They make their own wacky versions of Rush Hour 2, Driving Miss Daisy and Robocop.

They start calling their videos “sweded,” an invented term that takes on the meaning they give it. A movie is “sweded” when it has been given the Mike and Jerry remake treatment. Their “sweded” films become so popular that they cannot keep up with the demand. First they enlist the help of Alma, the lovely and sweet Melonie Diaz. But soon, the whole neighborhood is involved in the art of “sweding.”

The refilming of the movies is the core of the funny in Be Kind Rewind. Director Gondry just turns Jack Black loose, and he does what he does. He makes fun of the movies and acts silly and makes us laugh. The remaking of movies also plays to Gondry’s strengths, his unique visual style and sense of whimsy. Gondry, the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and writer/director of The Science of Sleep, knows how to create his own reality.

As he did in The Science of Sleep, Gondy modifies everyday objects to stand in for filmed images. Cardboard cut-outs of cars and television sets appear in “sweded” films. A pizza behind the head signifies a head injury. Ketchup is blood. Soap flakes are snow. Dismantled plastic toys are armor. Toy guns are guns. The Lion King, in its “sweded” version, features puppets and backdrops that give it a bit of the flavor of the stage version.

Mr. Fletcher returns and confesses that the building is about to be torn down and that he’s made up the Fats Waller stories. At first he has no enthusiasm for the plan to save the store through renting “sweded” videos, but he’s won over by the increase in business and the enthusiasm of Mike, Jerry and Alma. Be Kind Rewind is part pop comedy, but it is also an old-fashioned message picture. It champions the connections between people and their neighbors and neighborhood. You could take the title as a call to keep a simpler time in mind. Be Kind Rewind is also a valentine to the joys of making art and being closely connected to making your own fun. Jerry knows that a big part of their success is the closeness people feel to movies they love and the camaraderie they feel making something together.

“Make art!” Glen Hansard encouraged the Academy when accepting his Oscar. That’s what Gondry and his cast and crew are saying in Be Kind Rewind. The folks in a little corner of Passaic don’t need a big budget to make their own big thrills. Be Kind Rewind is a sweet little film, and its message is surprisingly down home and earnest. But it may be a little too convincing. The movies in Be Kind Rewind cost only a dollar to see. And unless you’re a fanatic Michel Gondry or Jack Black fan, I would say a dollar is about what you should pay to see their film. It shouldn’t cost a lot of money to have a little fun. After all, you could go out and “swede” something yourself.

Copyright 2008 Ad Media Inc.