Be Kind, Rewind

Synopsis: A man whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally erases every tape in the video store where his friend works. They set out to remake the lost films.

Michel Gondry’s wonderful whimsicality is given free rein as two guileless men remake movies and find they’re helping to remake their community too. Inspired by experiences on his 2005 music documentary Dave Chapelle's Block Party, Gondry sets out to explore the possibilities of community collaboration. Be Kind, Rewind is full of innocence and rough edges, a kind of love letter to an era when movies were made on a shoestring and delighted their audiences.

Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover) runs an aging, unsuccessful video store in a condemned tenement at a time when competitors are starting to stock DVDs. His assistant Mike (Mos Def) and his friend Jerry (Jack Black) are inspired by Fletcher’s tales of Fats Waller, the jazz great, being born in the tenement. Jerry is a frustrated mechanic, building elaborate additions onto customer’s cars and fighting a growing suspicion that the nearby powerplant is a government conspiracy controlling his mind. While breaking into the plant in a failed sabotage bid, he becomes magnetized – accidentally erasing every video tape in the store while Fletcher is away.

Fletcher’s favourite customer, Miss Falewicz (Mia Farrow), comes in the same day asking for Ghostbusters, and Mike and Jerry set out on what becomes a snowballing success as amateur movie remakers. Their remakes are marked by $10-$20 budgets, inventive props and a great sense of humour. The local community clamour for more remakes, which the pair describe as ‘sweding’ the originals (Sweden-ising? See examples at bekindmovie.com). Along the way, they recruit Alma from the dry-cleaners (Melonie Diaz), and the threesome eventually find themselves involving the whole neighbourhood In filming a documentary recreating a new history for Fats Waller.

Mos Def and Melonie Diaz have a lot of natural charm and that holds the story together, while Jack Black at times feels a little miscast but still creates a good manic counterpoint to his fellow low rent movie moguls. The visual inventiveness feels familiar after Gondry’s The Science Of Sleep (2006). Yet while appearing (a stylistic conceit,one assumes) more amateurish than that film, it gives a great sense of freedom to the story-telling. Imagination is presented as a liberating, enlivening force; where the strictures of the movie industry are released and the opportunities are limitless. This is not the celebration of the individual auteur, but a celebration of community and passion over professionalism.

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