[BretLudwig]

"Be Kind Rewind"


"Here's my American Conservative review from February of "Be Kind
Rewind," which is now out on DVD:

A new satirical website called Stuff White People Like has earned
three million visits in the last ten days by offering dead-on deadpan
analyses of status symbols among the under-40 upper middle class. Listed
along with such de rigueur affectations of the more-sensitive-than-thou
set as "Apple Products," "Threatening to Move to Canada," and "Barack
Obama," is "Michel Gondry," the French director of Bjork's music videos
and "such white classics as 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.'"

Christian Lander, who masterminds the site, helpfully advises:

"[Mentioning Gondry] can be used to help find common ground with white
people. Talk about how you wanted to direct music videos after you saw
Michel Gondrys video for €œAround the World€� by Daft Punk. Then make
a joke about how foolish you were at that age and everyone will have a good
laugh. But they will also feel your pain about sacrificing your artistic
dreams."

Like much of the stuff white people like, there is something to be
said for the ingenious and ingenuous Gondry, whose video autobiography is
aptly entitled "I've Been 12 Forever." His twee trademarks are childlike
sets and props that he might have made out of cardboard and other junk he
found in his dad's garage. Indeed, I found Gondry's surrealist comedy "The
Science of Sleep," with Gael GarcÃ*a Bernal as a boyish graphics designer
who can't tell his waking and dreaming lives apart, the most delightful
movie of 2006.

Yet, while Apple can charge $800 extra for a laptop, movie tickets all
cost about the same, so having a small upscale fan base doesn't do much
financially for Gondry. To escape the status-striver's ghetto and connect
with the American mass market, Gondry is recycling the do-it-yourself
aesthetic of "Science" in "Be Kind Rewind." It stars part-time heavy metal
singer Jack Black and part-time rapper Mos Def. Unfortunately, although not
surprisingly, American lunkheadedness and French condescension make an
ineffectual combination.

While Mos Def is #68 on the Stuff White People Like site, Jack Black's
reputation is in decline. Here, he plays the same character as in "School
of Rock" and all his other films, the pop culture-obsessed loser. Yet, the
suspicion is growing that perhaps Black isn't a genius who understands the
common mind -- maybe he just has the common mind.

The premise of "Be Kind Rewind" is even more rickety than that of
"Science." Mos Def is the mild-mannered clerk at Danny Glover's dusty
VHS-only video store in the slums of Passaic, New Jersey. While the owner
is on vacation, the assistant's paranoid friend (Black) tries to sabotage
the next-door power plant. The electro-magnetic pulse erases all the
videotapes.

To prevent the owner's dotty friend (Mia Farrow) from tattling when
she finds out that "Ghostbusters" is blank, they reshoot it in an
afternoon: "I'll be Bill Murray; you be everyone else." Soon, the whole
neighborhood wants to appear in their 20-minute zero-budget remakes of
famous movies.

"Be Kind Rewind" is a tribute to the You Tube generation's devotion to
making stuff up themselves -- albeit, an inordinately expensive accolade to
amateurism. Gondry, who spent only $6 million on "Science," somehow
squandered $20 million here. The endless credits list for this elephantine
trifle include 16 drivers and a "second second assistant director."

There wasn't enough in the budget, though, for a good script doctor.
Gondry's amusing trilingual screenplay for "Science of Sleep" showed that
the screenwriting Oscar he won for co-authoring "Eternal Sunshine" with
the great Charlie Kaufman wasn't wholly a gift. Yet, as talented as the
auteur is, it's asking too much of the visually-oriented Frenchman to
expect him to write witty dialogue in English.

Still, "Rewind" raises the question of whether, with an infinite
number of choices in free entertainment (some of it as good as Stuff) just
a click away, can going to the movies survive?

I think so. First, trying to perfect anything visual requires endless
work (as the film's three-month shooting schedule suggests). This means
the nonprofessionals who have enough time and energy to shoot their own
movies are generally so young they haven't had a life yet, and can merely
parody the pop culture rattling around inside their heads.

Second, one big reason Americans still spend $9.7 billion annually on
movie tickets is to be forced to sit still and watch a single story for
two hours without the nagging sense that you could (and thus should) be
surfing to something else cooler.

Rated PG-13 for some sexual references."

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/be-kind-rewind.html

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