Film: Be Kind Rewind

[His Name Is Frank]

This looks to be a good Jack Black film for a change. It stars Mos Def as a video store owner and Black,as his friend who accidently erases all of the videos. They come up with the idea to replace the movies by re-enacting the movies themselves. Directed by Micheal Gondry(Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,The Science of Sleep)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=J7C8nHAAs70

 

[continuousbeing2]

I am very excited for this.

check out this very meta trailer for it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=vFN27E34BKg

loves it

 

[His Name Is Frank]

I am very excited for this.

check out this very meta trailer for it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=vFN27E34BKg

loves it

That was awesome! A trailer within a trailer!

 

[jpgrdnr]

Hopefully this gets a fairly wide release.

 

[ego_loss]

I have high hopes for this one. I just hope Gondry can keep Jack Black under control. I'd hate to see a brilliant movie like this spoiled by Black's "chubby OCD dude" act... especially when Mos Def is headlining. Mos Def is a solid actor, and this COULD be his golden ticket.

 

[supertrav77]

This was an OK movie. I give it a solid C+ or B-.
Only problem is that my old coke dealer was a dead ringer for Mos Def and it was really distracting for the first half.

 

[alasdairm]

I have high hopes for this one. I just hope Gondry can keep Jack Black under control. I'd hate to see a brilliant movie like this spoiled by Black's "chubby OCD dude" act... especially when Mos Def is headlining. Mos Def is a solid actor, and this COULD be his golden ticket.

i'm interested to hear what you think steve. i enjoyed it as a simple distraction and it had a pretty cookie-cutter happy ending. i don't think either jack black or mos def were challenged by the movie at all and, frankly, given some of gondry's other incredible work, the visual potential of the concept was never realised.

alasdair

 

[L2R]

^that's a shame

 

[jpgrdnr]

It wasn't as good as Science of Sleep. The whole Fats Waller backstory didn't make a whole lot of sense. Jack Black wasn't bad (and he fit his role pretty well), but there was too much of his physical comedy/schtick. He doesn't play a character, he IS a character, etc.
It was enjoyable to watch Gondry do a lot on screen with very little, but that's about it.

Its not a bad movie, just didn't live up to expectations. Gondry tried to be somewhat accessible/mainstream, but he should have went the other way
and made a really weird flick.

 

[L2R]

what a fluffy piece of nonsensical silliness. i'm more interested in seeing the "sweded" videos they made more than the movie itself.

supposedly they're on the official website
http://www.bekindmovie.com/google_home.html

i laughed a few times so 2/5

 

[Khadijah]

yo, i fell asleep n didnt see the whole thing, but the remade videos....OMG...Yo....i was laughin so hard....just retarded shit, in a good way. Iunno. I laughed. thas all im worryin bout w/this one.


aaand, plus, its set in Passaic

 

[L2R]

this should be called "be kind, get stoned, watch this"

 

[junglist15]

^ i did that and really enjoyed this movie. %)

 

[wizekrak]

The Sweded Ghostbusters was easily the best part of the film, the streams, the slimer, the photocopied faces for the negative filming. It's a shame the rest of the film wasn't as clever, had they maintained the same level of hilarity throughout it would have been amazing. I found the second half to be pretty weak.

 

[RareForm]

Horrrrible.

 

[ego_loss]

i'm interested to hear what you think steve. i enjoyed it as a simple distraction and it had a pretty cookie-cutter happy ending. i don't think either jack black or mos def were challenged by the movie at all and, frankly, given some of gondry's other incredible work, the visual potential of the concept was never realised.

alasdair

I was almost afraid to watch this movie after reading so many bad reviews... but I ended up enjoying the hell out of it.

I commented earlier about Black's potential for ruining this movie with his spastic freakazoid acting. Thankfully, Gondry did a supreme job of keeping him mellow. And Mos Def once again hit it out of the park. Both of them were very understated but amazingly effective in finding the real centers of their respective characters.

The story is a contrived, corny fairy tale, but it is still an enjoyable movie. Visually it does fall short of Gondry's past visual feasts, but almost all of the practical, in camera effects are techniques that he started using ten or fifteen years ago during his music video phase. Check out the video "Lucas with the Lid Off" for a prime example of his early use of perspective, projection and steadicam techniques that made some appearances in Be Kind.

So yeah, it's silly fluff. It's like a love note from Gondry to Hollywood. Anyone with a real passion for movies will be able to relate, on some level, to this film. A nice little film nerd fairy tale.