Cast: Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow
Dir: Michel Gondry
Rating: 3/5
Jerry (Black; King Kong, School of Rock) and Mike (Mos Def; The Italian Job) are childhood friends living in Passaic, New Jersey, trying to make ends meet.
Jerry is the neighbourhood mechanic and lives in a trailer near the power plant which he swears is slowly killing him with its ‘microwaves’.
When Jerry becomes magnetised while trying to sabotage the power plant, he accidentally erases all the tapes in the old-fashioned video store ‘Be Kind Rewind’, where his best friend works.
Already struggling to keep the ailing business financially afloat, Jerry and Mike decide to remake one of the erased movies in Jerry’s junkyard in order to keep their few customers happy.
To their astonishment, their unique ‘Sweded’ version of the movie is a hit! Soon, Mike, Jerry and their friends from the neighbourhood are in full-time production, re-making movies, from Ghostbusters to King Kong, and in the end revitalise not only the business but the entire community.
Michel Gondry received critical acclaim for his last picture Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and returns with Be Kind Rewind that cements Gondry as an intelligent filmmaker.
Jack Black and Mos Def are perfectly cast as polar opposites with Black's all over the place enthusiasm contrasted with Def's straight face seriousness as they fight to protect a failing business in a run down suburb.
While the film is dubbed a comedy the laughs do not come rolling one after the other it instead delivers a heartfelt message of a community sticking together to overcome bad times.
The highlight of the movie is, without a doubt, the remake scenes as Ghostbusters, Terminator, Rush Hour and Driving Miss Daisy all get the Sweded treatment, Jack Black in a dress priceless!
While the film does feel a tad long and there's some serious lack of character development you have got to applaud Gondry's bravery in his filmmaking as he brings such heart and warmth out of a premise where, on paper, these elements don't really exist.
Gondry uses Be Kind Rewind to champion independent and original filmmaking, he certainly can't be accused of following the crowd, and give a thumbs down to mainstream Hollywood.
Black probably brings an audience to this film that may have gone unnoticed by many and it's great to see a well known actor take a risk with a project like this.
In all this is a film with great heart and nostalgia as we all take a trip down memory lane revisiting some of the movie we love.
Be Kind Rewind is out to own and rent now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw