2008, USA
Adventre, Comedy, Drama
READ THE REVIEW AT The Desert Sun.
Extended version:
The future may be unwritten, but the past is also up for interpretation in director Michel Gondry's beautifully low-tech comedy, Be Kind Rewind.
When a decrepit berg in Passaic, New Jersey, finds itself at risk of demolition, the dollar video store reminds the residents of the history that unites them — whether or not the accounts are factual.
Through an appropriately absurd turn of events, Jerry (Jack Black, in all of his unbridled manic glory) magnetizes the entire stock of VHS videos as Mike (Mr. "Universal Magnetic" himself, Mos Def) watches shop while the owner is on vacation. When their only regular customer requests a movie, the boys are forced to recreate the film themselves. Word spreads of their "sweded" films, and soon everyone in the neighborhood is requesting an addition to the remake library.
Mike and Jerry share a childlike naïveté that creates a juvenile atmosphere, complete with adults at the ready to scold them for inappropriate behavior. Authority figures dole out punishments swiftly and with little regard for logic. Matching the limited resources allowed for effects are the almost cartoonishly drawn characters, both of which would be expected to result from an adolescent mind if it were not for the sophisticated beauty behind their simplicity.
Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) technically devolves with each film he makes, and it is a fantastic voyage each time he does more with less. While other films attempt to make the extraordinary look real, Gondry does the reverse and pulls magic from a hat of simple tricks.
With a junk yard and ginormous copy machine at his disposal, Gondry has no need for complex computerized animation. In one imaginative series, the camera samples productions ranging from When We Were Kings to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with each scene utilizing a clever solution for a difficult shot. Gondry's scrappy effects are infused with a humor and freshness that makes the most expensive and impressive movies seem cold in comparison.
As technology marches on and perfunctory DVD rental stores pop up down the street, unbeknownst to itself their little world craves creativity. After a warm up of revisualizing films that everyone has seen, they start from scratch and recreate the history of a local legend that no one really knows. In the process, they rediscover community and refoster relationships previously detached. In rewinding the moment, they are reminded of what they would be losing if the neighborhood became gentrified and sanitized.
Gondry allows a sweet innocence to infuse an inventive story about finding identity as a group in a town being destroyed by progress. Much like the film within the film, there is life in his art and a desire to find joy in the basics.