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This is a strange picture to use as my Be Kind Rewind header, but I couldn’t resist. It’s from a scene that made me laugh out loud.

As a pre-teen growing up in the 1970s, I spent a lot of time watching daytime TV. A small screen with fluorescing picture elements revealing the whole history of American TV and movie culture. As a young person, the only thing that mattered was ‘did I like it.’ I had taste, I think, at an early age (I could tell, for instance, that Battle Beyond the Stars was deeply awful), but otherwise I didn’t discriminate based on subject matter or era. I loved movie musicals, shorts, epics, I loved it all.

This is why I am well-familiar with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movies of the late 30s which often ended with them and their friends in dire need to raise a lot of money very quickly to save the farm/orphanage/whatever. “My dad’s got a barn!” one of the kids would say, and one of the main cast would say “Let’s put on a show!” And they’d quickly assemble the set and costumes in the musical version of the A-Team Scene but with close-ups of hammers, saws, and sewing needles instead of blowtorches and improvised mortar artillery. Then, in the end, the kids do a bunch of song-and-dance routines and the whole town shows up and they raise the money to save the Thing.

These were very satisfying endings though, of course, complete flights of fancy. As is the entire movie Be Kind, Rewind, the spiritual successor to those movies of 70 years ago. Hah! You thought I’d never get there.

Be Kind, Rewind is about 2 friends, and a third they hijack from a dry cleaning store, who hit upon the idea of filming their own, 20-minute versions of famous movies after Jack Black accidentally becomes magnetized and erases all the video tapes in the local video store Mos Def manages. It’s such a brilliant idea for a comedy, I think some reviewers have been led astray by their own expectations. This is a very small movie, intimate. It has to be, by virtue of its own subject matter.

Because this movie is about the new, D.I.Y. mindset, it has to be small and feel like it was shot on the cheap. That’s not entirely the case in execution, but you can see what the director was going for. Be Kind, Rewind is about 30% more fanciful than you might believe by looking at the trailer. There are some actual special effects in it. Perhaps there’s a point to be made in calling out the fact that this a movie about 2 guys who film their own 20-minute version of Ghostbusters in under 2 hours using PVC-pipe and garland in place of proton packs and their “streams,” and yet it has some actual, CGI and optical effects in it that the characters themselves could have never done. However, I will not make that point. The movie is about this idea, it is not the idea in execution. It is very funny, and it’s sweet, but it’s also a bit frothy and lacking in substance. Specifically in the relationship of the three filmmakers: Jack Black, Mos Def, and Melonie Diaz.

Mos Def is a capable actor. He’s a better actor than Jack Black, that’s for sure. I encourage you to check out the unfortunately-titled movie Something The Lord Made in which Def stars with Alan Rickman as the two men who pioneer open heart surgery. I’ve seen him in several movies since then and he has, as we say, his shit together. Jack Black isn’t bad, he’s a lot of fun to watch, but there’s always an element of Jack Blackness about him. Unlike Def, Black doesn’t seem capable of actually acting, merely performing in a comic manner.

Def and Diaz flirt briefly in one scene, and it’s kinda sweet, but it seems like there should be something more. Something more between Def and Black as well. They’re best friends who appear to have grown up together. But we’re missing that scene in which we see why they’re best friends, or how.

There are certain reviews it’s safe for me to read before I see a movie, because I know they will contain no insight. Just “is it funny?” that kind of thing. And all the reviews I read beforehand about Be Kind, Rewind said the same thing; “there’s no point to it.” The reviewers were confused; is this meant to be some kind of commentary on the modern, D.I.Y., YouTube generation?

And I think the observation “there’s something missing” is correct, but not in any kind of statement. The statement’s there, and it’s clear; you can do it yourself. The same impulse that drives Black and Def drove Sid and Johnny and Mickey and Judy. I can’t believe I just wrote that, but I’m standing behind it. You can do it yourself.

What’s missing is something I’m noticing missing from more and more movies these days from young directors, and that’s real relationships. Black and Def are funny, and they act like real friends, but the bedrock of their friendship is absent. There’s a moment in the film where Black rails against Def for…what I don’t know, but the issue is; their neighborhood is junk. This is a complete non sequitur because the filmmakers haven’t established that Def has any particular affection for his neighborhood, or that anyone there is particularly happy or unhappy for any special reason. We’re meant to assume the place is a dump, assume Mos Def’s character loves it and defends it anyway, and Black yearns to get out. But prior to these scenes, none of these emotions or motivations are established.

All we know is that Mos Def and Danny Glover have a nice father/son relationship, and Black and Def are friends and that’s it. The outburst from Black makes no more sense than the brief moment where Def and Diaz flirt with each other. There’s no preamble to this, and no follow-up. Furthermore, we’re introduced to the rivalry between the local video store and the Big Rental Chain very abruptly. The first time we discover there IS any such rivalry is when Glover takes a week off to, secretly, spy on the store and figure out what they know that he doesn’t.

I thought that part was very well done. Danny Glover’s character, faced with the imminent closure of his store, doesn’t hit upon some fanciful idea of how to save it. He undertakes a methodical and insightful examination of the Big Chain Videostore over the course of a week, and successfully determines exactly how they make money. Neither he, nor the movie, is very judgmental about the Big Chain Videostore. He makes notes about how the staff isn’t knowledgeable about the movies they do or do not carry, they have very little selection, and a primitive understanding of genre, but the movie makes no statement about whether this is a good or bad thing. You might think “well, obviously it’s a bad thing because of how it’s framed” as did I, but I think that’s a mistake. The old mom & pop video store was out-evolved by a chain that was more fit. Better adapted to serve more people. And the point of the movie is that the future is D.I.Y. and the Big Chain itself is now obsolete. The film is no more judgmental about the Big Chain than it is the Mom & Pop store. Both are obsolete by the time the movie opens, and indeed it’s only through a combination of Danny Glover’s insights, and Def & Black’s resourcefulness that the store has any hope at all.

Danny Glover is really a very fine actor and plays this part pitch perfect. He’s so good, I began to wonder if he was really as old now as he appeared in this film, remembering that his character in Lethal Weapon is almost 50 and that was 20 years ago. That’s not the case, however, phew! I hate it when people get old.

If this movie had been made 20 years ago, there’d be some point to be made about race, and Glover would be burdened with having to explain it or set people right, but apart from one scene where Jack Black is a naive idiot, the issue happily never comes up. I love this.

Apart from some few flaws, the movie is very funny. I don’t know how it would play if you were to rent it and watch it alone, it’s not very insightful of me to say that comedies need to be watched with an audience, but in an audience, it’s original and hysterical.

The D.I.Y. ideal is taken to its logical and fulfilling conclusion. Black becomes a “celebrity”to the rest of the people in the neighborhood, including signing autographs. No attempt is made, after the first, to trick their audience into thinking these are real movies. They shoot them in Black’s junkyard across the street, then walk back to the video store, still in costume, and rent out the movies. When Black returns from “Sweding” Robocop, he does an impromptu “in store appearance” and is genuine and authentic and funny. This is why, in spite of his failings as an actor, Black is perfect for this role. Because he obviously is that guy. In real life. “I know Robot Kung Fu!” This isn’t acting, it’s just being silly, and in that moment, it’s perfect.

Celebrity never goes to Black’s head, because it’s entirely organic and deserved. The rest of the neighborhood is playing along with him, and he with them. In a sense, this is a critique of Hollywood, but not the one we expect. It is not a satire. It’s more a manifesto. They get their lead actress by walking into a dry cleaners, pointing to a pretty girl and saying “we’re making a movie, come with us.” They don’t get her, they get her younger, goofy sister. I had my Satire-Detection Equipment running at full capacity and I could find no commentary about actors and agents here, except the obvious; you can do it yourself. It doesn’t have to be the way it’s always been.

There’s a cute cameo from one of the stars of one of the movies they Swede, and I half-expected this actor to be playing themselves. I was the only person in the audience, by the way, who laughed at the idea of their D.I.Y movies being called the “Swedish” version of the real thing, because at work, my friends and I often got cracked copies of software and hacks from the real, actual Swedes on the team, and so when we see someone playing a game that hasn’t come out yet, we say “Ah, is this the ‘Swedish’ version?”

The core tension in the film (Spoiler!) whereby Glover’s store is threatened with demolition is never resolved. We never find out what happens to the store, but the point is; we don’t need to. The movie isn’t about his store, it’s about this endeavor, which is by any measure a success. And the idea that you and your friends and the people in your neighborhood can do it yourselves. You don’t need Hollywood. I think this point is currently more applicable to the collapsing music industry, where huge acts like U2 and Radiohead, the kind of acts that could never have been so big were it not for a massive monolithic company promoting them, are the last of their kind, never to be seen again, and the future is many, many smaller acts, with smaller followings, connected by the internet.

For a while, at least, we still need Hollywood for big-budget action movies. But for how long, I wonder?

End Of Line

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