Be Kind, Rewind
Country: USA
Director: Michel Gondry
Language: English
Michel Gondry’s Be Kind, Rewind, to put it simply, is a laughable dig at remakes. But what it needs is a rewrite. Saved only by Gondry’s mastery of props and his fluency with the mise-en-scene, the movie pityingly suffers from an unfitting script and terrible, unintelligent comedy.
Jack Black, the reason a casual moviegoer would watch this film, plays the ignorantly self-destructive Jerry. Living out of a beat-up trailer, his only commute from home would be to visit his friend Mike who works at the VHS rental store. Mike, played by Mos Def, is a loyal employee of Be Kind, Rewind, and an almost adopted son to it’s owner Mr. Fletcher, a role perfectly shod by Danny Glover. When Mr. Fletcher decides to take a secret vacation to go spying on a rival business and to learn about the up and coming technology of DVDs, he leaves the store in the trusted hands of Mike, strictly warning him to KEEP JERRY OUT.
But when Jerry accidentally magnetizes all the tapes in the store, events transpire very differently. Mike needs Jerry in the store always by his side to help (re)make 20-minute mock-ups of some of twentieth century’s biggest names in commercial movies, starting with the Ghostbusters.
The process of making these films is termed “sweding,” according to the duo who claim the tapes are specially made and dispatched from Sweden. Surprisingly enough the store’s patrons, who are also good friends of Mr. Fletcher’s, adore the fast-paced and scarily funny sweded versions. Soon the queue gets longer, the cash drawer ka-chings and the business begins to boom. “Mike & Jerry” productions are the neighbourhood’s new sensation. All goes well until the FBI steps in, and that’s also when predictability takes control of the script.
Now somwhere in between this amusing plot, a Jazz musician’s name takes centre stage. We would not only ruin the surprise for you, but we would be throwing trash at how this parallel storyline was poorly integrated, if we reveal more about that. So we’ll let you be the judge when you watch it, if you really want to that is.
The scenes that make the movie work are the ones where the duo, joined by Melonie Diaz (Raising Victor Vargas), the female lead in all the sweded versions, take to their street-sets to shoot their remakes. As demand for their creations gets exponential the cast gets bigger and the set becomes more and more lively.
Sadly though, these scenes in the movie were only screened only as montages. If more of the remakes were shown as appropriate-length behind-the-scenes cuts as with Robocop and Rush Hour, then Gondry could have, to an extent, minimized some post-release fan backlash and disappointment.
Be that as it may, the filming of the finale when Mike, Jerry and the entire Be Kind, Rewind crew get down to produce their own documentary is highly commendable. Camera-technique revelations like placing a portable fan to achieve the old-reel effect (not sure if that’s how its really done) and the use of cardboard cars and a list of other inventive props will greatly arouse completist film fans.
If nothing, Be Kind, Rewind does well in communicating the message that art direction and visualization is of great import in filmmaking; an aspect that involves meticulously painstaking preparation, vividly picture-perfect set design and perfectly fitting props among others. Even though the final play, coming from Gondry, paints us with utter disappointment, we would like to extend a thundering ovation and a deafening applause to the conjuring tricks by the art crew, and of course the auteur’s portrayal of it.
Our favourite sweded flicks: Ghostbusters, Robocop, Rush Hour, Driving Miss Daisy and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Do check out their website to get into the whole sweding thing. They’ve got a collection of sweded fan shorts that are quite amusing - www.bekindrewind.com.
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