Sundance ’08: Be Kind Rewind

***/****
starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow
written and directed by Michel Gondry

by Alex Jackson Michel Gondry has said he always wanted to make a film like Back to the Future (i.e., a quirky, funny, big-budget movie), and I guess this is his version of it. It has science-fiction, toilet humour, a lovable man-child (à la Adam Sandler or Jerry Lewis, here played by Jack Black), slapstick, romance, and a classic storyline involving evil developers with plans to pave over the community hangout unless the heroes can stop them in time. Gondry clearly wants to break the one-hundred million dollar mark with Be Kind Rewind–and who knows, he just might do it. Much worse films have made the cut. There's something wonderful and crazy about Gondry's utter lack of cynicism. He treats crowd-pleasing blockbuster filmmaking like a genre on which he'll put his personal stamp. I mean this lovingly, but you might need to be French to be this wacky. Be Kind Rewind is a thrift shop and video store in urban New Jersey that has yet to transition from VHS to DVD. It's owned and operated by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), who, having learned that his building will be demolished and his business relocated to the projects, takes off to figure out how to save the store, leaving Mike (Mos Def) in charge. After Mike's best friend Jerry (Black) becomes magnetized and erases every tape on the shelf, the two decide to replace them with their own homemade recreations. The videos don't convince anybody, of course, but they're a huge hit anyway; what at first seems like a celebration of art for art's sake quickly becomes rather achingly poignant. There's one thread in particular that really encapsulates the charm of the film for me. Slightly batty Ms. Kimberly (Mia Farrow), a good friend of Mr. Fletcher, commissions a version of her favourite film, Driving Miss Daisy. Mike is reluctant, as he finds the picture paternalistic and condescending, but he goes along with it only to be driven off the deep end by Jerry's impersonation of Jessica Tandy. Later, they decide to remake the films with the customers in them, casting Ms. Kimberly as Miss Daisy and Mr. Fletcher in the Morgan Freeman role. Suddenly, the nature of Ms. Kimberly's attachment to Driving Miss Daisy becomes clear. (To actually verbalize it seems almost cruel.) To say that Gondry loves all movies is a covert way of saying he loves all people, even crazy white ladies who are racist without understanding that they're racist. That sense of compassion extends to the bad guys, too: when Sigourney Weaver shows up to enforce the copyright notice on the front of the tapes, Gondry has her say to a co-worker, "They think we're the villains, don't they?" The film earns its populist sentiments and then ends on a surprisingly thoughtful note by suggesting that sometimes winning isn't as important as losing with dignity.