Be Kind Rewind

When I saw this movie I thought It was about them being just funny, recreating blockbuster movies like "Ghostbusters" and "Robocop" just to name a few of the movies that they reshooted. As the movie got in to the deeper story of the film I was moved by the whole town standing together we don't see that in this big cities anymore. Deeper meaning than comedy...

While sometimes not meeting prior expectations yields a real diamond in the rough; with Be Kind Rewind, it's more like finding a dollar on the sidewalk. It's nice but it won't do much for you. The premise is interesting but there are simply too many plot holes to make it seem believeable and not enough laughs to make you not care. What you have is a slow moving "little" movie, cute at times, with good intentions and a good turn by Mos Def, but not much else. There are some humorous moments in the sweded movies but the artificially sweet ending rang hollow and the rest of the cast were pretty average. View before buying, unlike what I did which was to impulse buy it with the predictable remorse. A movie like this will be selling for under five bucks before long so just wait it out.

This movie was cute. It had some good humor, especially when Jack Black gets 'magnetized.' But I kinda got bored.
It was a simple plot- man has video store that will be torn down if he doesn't come up with enough money. While he's away, he leaves the store in Mos Def's care and after Jack Black's been magnetized he erases all the tapes, therefore the two film their version of each movie that's on the shelves, customers are demanding more of these movies because they're so much better than original and then all hell breaks loose.
I liked it but it wasn't the greatest. If you like simple laughter with a good ending, well this movie should give you a good dose, but then what'll you do?

I rented this on Blu-Ray, which part of me found slightly amusing since the subject matter is about a video rental store still stocking nothing but VHS, struggling with the transition to DVD. That's just one of many things in this movie that seem so incredibly improbable -- is there a single person in the Western World who cannot afford $30 for a DVD player at Wal-Mart, and must therefore keep renting VHS tapes from their corner store?

The plot of this film is ridiculous and it's impossible to suspend disbelief through most of it. There is this old VHS rental place where Jerry (Jack Black) spends his time hanging out when he isn't hiding in his camper-trailer with tinfoil on his head to protect him from the mind control beams he thinks are being sent out by the local power company. He gets electrified in a botched attempt to sabotage the power plant -- in a fit of over-the-top slapstick -- and become magnetized. When he later handles all the VHS cassettes at the store, his magnetism de-gausses the tapes resulting in all of them being blank. In order to cover for this catastrophe, the shop's temporary manager ("musician" Mos Def) comes up with the idea to re-create the movies as needed by re-enacting them and shooting this re-enactment on videotape.

The premise has some promise, and initially it delivers. Their attempt to re-create "Ghostbusters", with low-budget effects such as the signature proton particle streams concocted from Christmas tree garland and wire, is quite amusing. Their later attempt to re-create "Driving Miss Daisy" also generates a few good laughs. But the idea that anybody who rented these re-creations would be amused by them is palpably absurd. Yet that's exactly what happens. This small independant video store is being nearly run out of business by its rival, a presumably heartless corporate franchise store, and the local shop is about to have its building condemned. Can the nonsensically popular makeshift video re-enactments generate enough new business to save the shop from this ubiquitous Hollywood cliche? Who cares. The laughs stopped coming very quickly after they began, I didn't much care about any of the characters, and the plot depended on characters being simultaneously outrageously stupid and preposterously sentimental. Like a bad episode of M*A*S*H, it turns on a dime from goofy slapstick to maudlin junk.

The picture quality seems to be quite good, there was very little film grain, close-ups were rather decent, and there are some nice sunlit shots outdoors that really showcase the Blu-Ray format's superiority to DVD. But the movie is so thoroughly mediocre that I would not buy it even for that purpose. If, however, you have seen this movie and you thought this movie was worth owning, the upgrade to Blu-Ray may be worth it to you.

I watched the movie just hoping it would be entertaining and I would get a few chuckles. What I got was just that and a little more. What I was not expecting was a movie that had alot of heart in it and made by people who care alot about people. Being a person that loves films, I thought it was a great that the people in the movie loved the films for what they were and saw the creativity in what Jack Black and Mos Def were doing. That was the point that stuck with me the most in this movie. Don't expect this movie to be a laugh out loud comedy, watch it for the meaning behind what should be important to everyone.