I wish I could say that I loved this movie, because I so wanted to love this movie. I mean it has my future baby daddy Mos Def in it…how could I not? Alas, I can’t even say that I stayed awake through the whole thing. What I can say is that Be Kind Rewind (or at least the ¾ of it that I saw) is a cute, quirky and rather low-budget movie about two friends that end up making a whole slew of cute, quirky, low-budget movies together. Mos Def and Jack Black play Mike and Jerry, two dim-witted friends who are connected by the relic of a video store that Mike works in and that Jerry mostly hangs out in when he’s not working in the nearby junkyard. Danny Glover is Mr. Fletcher, the owner of Be Kind. When Mr. Fletcher goes out of town for a weekend video convention, he leaves Mike in charge of the shop, but not before issuing a warning to not let Jerry screw things up. A set of steak knives for ya if you can guess what happens next. That’s right! Jerry proceeds to screw things up, somehow managing to erase every video in the video store. The wacky duo then comes up with an even wackier idea -to ‘re-make’or ‘Swede*’ the erased movies, so as to keep the customers happy and the business running until Mr. Fletcher returns. This is where I thought hilarity would ensue, but unfortunately it’s where the movie started to fizzle. Watching the guys make their ‘sweded’ movies was like watching life-sized sock puppets do Shakespeare. Ok, ok. It wasn’t all bad. The movie-making scenes did elicit a few giggles, especially when the daft duo recruited a female (played by Melonie Diaz) to round out their filmmaking crew. There’s something about the 2-guys-with-a-girl-sidekick combo that is endearing, and though I like the chemistry between Jack Black and Mos Def on the screen, Melonie Diaz sort of stole the show for me. The rest of it was stolen by the letters zzzzzzzz….Walk, don’t run to the theater.

cheers,

k

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*Sweding – (as defined by director Michel Gondry) is remaking something from scratch using whatever you can get your hands on.
FYI - You can preview all of the sweded movies that Mike and Jerry made on the official Be Kind, Rewind website.