Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Movie review - Be Kind, Rewind

Heheheh, if there's one word I can use to describe this film, it's *clever*. From the twisted mind of Michel Gondry who brought us the screw job Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind*, BKR is a fun film, especially for buffs.

Mike (Mos Def) works in a failing video store in Passaic NJ, that only rents out VHS tapes. His friend Jerry (Jack Black) believes that the powerstation nearby is messing with his brain. When the store owner (Danny Glover) leaves the shop in Mike's hands, Jerry accidentally wipes all the tapes (he got magnetised in an attempt to sabotage the powerstation). When Mia Farrow requests Ghostbusters, and Mike is unable to source a VHS copy of it, he and Jerry decide to re-make the film themselves. As more customers request more films, they cook up a scheme to charge their increasing number of customers to remake - or *swede* because the films come from Sweden - their favourite films, and use the funds to restore the shop and town to glory.

Like other Gondry films, I can see this polarising viewers. On one hand, a lot of the cleverness of the movie derives from the visual jokes that come out of Mike and Jerry's attempts to recreate the movies requested by their customers. The low-techiness of the *special effects* to recreate the scenes is both hilarious and ingenious. On the other hand, if you haven't seen those movies, you probably wouldn't get why it's so clever.
It also didn't show as much *sweding* as some viewers may want. It runs out of steam a bit when the movie turns away from the ridiculous and towards drawing the community together, and having read other people's thoughts...I do have to agree that while it is very well acted, there is pretty much no character development.

The movie also raises a lot of issues that it doesn't resolve such as conglomerates vs. the little people, gentrification, racial stuff, hell, even whether the community are successful in their attempt to save the shop is left ambiguous. I suspect that the answer we're supposed to come to the conclusion that the store was demolished, but the creation of the Fats Waller *documentary* drew the people of the Passaic together, which is a far greater reward (yes, a bit mushy here).
This may frustrate some people, but I like that - them not having to spell out everything for the audience.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Pooey thought it could have done better.
7-8/10 (5-6/10 from Pooey)


*Bonus!* For people who would like to see the sweded movies, the BKR people have sweded their own version of youtube and stuck the movies at http://www.bekindmovie.com/youtube.html
Enjoy!

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