Sorry to be this way, but there seems to be reason to not only dislike but resist Michel Gondry‘s Be Kind Rewind (New Line, 1.25). The plot is about a video-store clerk (Mos Def) and his eccentric best buddy (Jack Black) have to reshoot dozens of popular movies after Black’s accidentally erases the store’s entire inventory of VHS tapes. Uh-huh. I know…forget naturalism and just go with it like we did with Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotlesss Mind and The Science of Sleep.
![](/images/column/11508/bekind.jpg)
Except I’ve chosen to not go with it this time, and I don’t care if dissing it sight unseen makes me sound small-minded or whatever. The plot sounds irritating as hell and, in the words of David Mamet, I say “no” to that.
Flight-of-fancy movies are Gondry’s signature, of course, but for any present-tense film to even half-work it has to half-resemble some fundamental aspect of the real- time world, especially if has anything to do with technology, old or new. I realize how groaningly literal-minded it sounds for someone like myself to say “no one except backwater Luddites watches movies on VHS tape these days, and finding a store that stocks only VHS is next to impossible.” But these two statements happen to be true, dammit. If I could make this awareness go away for Michel Gondry’s sake by clapping my hands, I would do that. But it won’t.
This is a movie that might have worked ten years ago, maybe. It seems so fanciful-flimsy it already feels like a mosquito buzzing around my ear. Part of me has always been vaguely irritated with Gondry, and now may be the time to slap him down like a drunk needs to be shaken hard and made to sober up with green tea or black coffee. I’m not saying I intend to trash Be Kind Rewind when it plays at Sundance, which would be stupid. But I’m halfway there.
![](https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/themes/amory/patreon-banner.jpg)