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Tuesday, Jan 06, 2009
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Odd Be Kind Rewind stuck in neutral |
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| Odd Be Kind Rewind stuck in neutral | ||
| by Sara Michelle Fetters -
SGN A&E Writer Like most of the films sprung from the mind of director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep), Be Kind Rewind is a bit of an odd duck. Which is a good thing, mainly because it acts in ways different than most Hollywood comedies and goes in directions you're never quite ready for. It is also seriously original, the visual imagination on display both weirdly wondrous and strangely sublime. Unfortunately, the film is also incredibly unfocused and doesn't ever find an emotional center. It's like Gondry's script can't decide what it is actually about, throwing caution to the wind and trying everything under the sun to stay relevant and funny without finding a satisfactory combination of the two. Throw in the fact the darn thing feels like it was made a full decade too late and all that's left is a head-scratching curiosity that's never as bad as you think it should be yet never as glorious as you slowly grow to hope. The basic thrust concerns two New Jersey losers, Mike (Mos Def) and Jerry (Jack Black), watching over a crumbling video store run by friend and mentor Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) while he is away on personal family business. After a freak accident leaves Mike's brain magnetized, the duo discover the entire store's VHS catalog has been erased, building resident Miss Falewicz (Mia Farrow) threatening to call their boss unless they can come up with a working copy of Ghostbusters. Thinking they're out of options, the bumbling friends hit upon the idea of re-filming the picture themselves. Next thing they know they're a neighborhood hit, and with the help of local dry cleaner's assistant Alma (Melonie Diaz) they start remaking pictures as varied as Robocop, Driving Miss Daisy, Rush Hour 2 and The Lion King. Suddenly Mr. Fletcher's video rental sales are going through the roof, and nothing and no one is going to stop these renegade filmmakers from reenacting every blank tape in the entire store. Needless to say, trouble does arise. This copyright infringement can't go on forever, after all. What's more, the local zoning authority wants to tear down the decrepit storefront to build condos, shipping all of them off to the projects with barely enough cash to start over. But as weird as it all this gets, the central melodrama is actually quite basic, and for anyone who has ever watched a Frank Capra comedy this follows his standard template almost to the letter. It's just the alphabet that's whacked out. Each film's remake (nicknamed "sweding" by the clueless twosome) is pretty darn hysterical, and like all of Gondry's previous epics they are all filled with painterly and creative visuals almost impossible to describe. From intimate miniatures constructed of cardboard, to copious amounts of tinfoil beautifully sprawled about everywhere, each corner of the frame is filled with something to look at and absorb. But this explosion of imagination is not enough. Much like The Science of Sleep, the writer/director is very good at giving viewers plenty to visually revel in and very bad at giving them something expressively human enough to relate to or find solace in. While this one has a heart (my chief complaint with that former enterprise), it just doesn't beat strong enough, and by the time all is said and done, the final Capra-esque payoff never feels justified. Yet the chief problem here is that this film comes ten years too late. On the dawn of HD DVD falling to Blu-ray, to say that VHS lost the war to DVD long ago would be an understatement. As hard as Gondry tries to explain how a store like Mr. Fletcher's could still be around I just didn't buy it, derailing any chance for the story to gain even a minute semblance of traction. Even in this movie world this odd irregularity just doesn't fly, and no matter how hard I wanted to suspend my disbelief the fact the era was just so wrong made it virtually impossible to do so. Which really is unfortunate because so much of Be Kind Rewind is undeniably wonderful. Black and Def make a fine Mutt and Jeff comedic team, while Farrow and Glover underplay their respective characters beautifully. It is also amazingly designed and shot, cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Dave Chappelle's Block Party) and production designer Dan Leigh (The Last Kiss) doing a splendid job of bringing everything to surrealistic life. I can't help but wonder what would have happened had Gondry worked with fellow writer Charlie Kaufman on this. Kaufman has proven time and again he can combine the weirdly chaotic and the intimately emotional together to almost amazing perfection (just check out Being John Malkovich, Adaptation or the pair's Eternal Sunshine for proof). It is exactly the thing missing here, those small character-driven details which could have made an oddly fascinating yet uncomfortably distancing piece like this one work. Instead, Be Kind Rewind gets stuck someplace in the middle, and like my dust-covered VCR, I can't help but think it is one film destined to be forgotten. Courtesy of www.moviefreak.com |
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