Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008): USA

Reviewed by Byron Potau.  Viewed on DVD.

I came into Be Kind Rewind with modest expectations.  Just something interesting from someone who directed a great film once.  What director Michel Gondry has given us is the year’s worst film.  It is an absolute piece of garbage that only the most optimistic reviewer could find anything redeeming in.  It is the kind of movie that even Ed Wood would exclaim “What were you thinking!?”

When Jerry (Jack Black at his most irritating) becomes magnetized while trying to sabotage an electrical substation he accidentally erases all the videotapes in Mike’s (Mos Def) uncle’s video store.  To hide this from his uncle, Mike and Jerry reshoot certain movies with a video camera, like Ghostbusters and Robocop.  At first, this is for the benefit of the store’s best customer (Mia Farrow) who is not all there mentally and does not seem to recognize that Ghostbusters now stars Mike and Jerry in a twenty minute camcorder version.  Other people start renting Mike and Jerry’s “sweeded” versions of movies as they become something of a phenomenon in the neighborhood.

When you have an obnoxious Jack Black getting magnetized in an accident that is just a recipe for disaster.  Oh yeah, he is sabotaging the substation because he thinks it is melting his brain.  It is every bit as stupid as it sounds.  The film asks far too much from the audience in suspending their belief.  Maybe the demented woman would not recognize that it is Mike in tin foil instead of Bill Murray, but when normal people start lining up to rent these “sweeded” movies it is too much.  The film seems to count on the audience somehow finding all of this not only plausible, but funny, but it is neither.  If handled well, the idea of remaking these films sounds like it could have been funny, but it isn’t.  Trust me on this one, this film is a complete waste of time.  Stay far away from it.