Video Games Fail To Entertain

Sun Herald

Sunday March 30, 2008

Rob Lowing

BE KIND REWIND

Rated: PG

Starring: Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow.

Critic's warning: Adult themes, language.

Critic's rating: 6/10

EVEN the toughest moviegoer has a soft spot for films about filmmaking. There is something endearing about watching struggling amateurs.

Who can forget Bowfinger, directed by Death At A Funeral's Frank Oz, with Steve Martin as the ageing director who, with his illegal Mexican crew, dreams of glory?

Bowfinger was sleek, funny and heart-warming. It was also a very Hollywood movie. So you don't expect to find it slavishly imitated in the latest from a French director who is promoted as an artistic provocateur.

Maybe it is symbolic of a career that has produced more confusion (Human Nature; The Science Of Sleep) than cult hits (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind).

Director Michel Gondry's latest is a tepid, idly amusing Hollywood knock-off that will disappoint anyone looking for sharp satire.

Mos Def plays Mike, the listless worker at a rundown video store and the friend of Jerry (Jack Black). The widespread popularity of DVD threatens the store's VHS rentals. Impending foreclosure is not helped when Black, while trying to sabotage a power station (don't ask why), is electrocuted.

The now "magnetised" Black promptly erases all the tapes in the store. So the boys have the bright idea of recreating the store's movies by using friends and local streets.

They will tell customers these tapes of expensive hits such as Ghostbusters and Rush Hour 2 have been manufactured in Sweden. Unexpectedly (don't ask), the tapes are a hit; everyone wants a "sweded version". The store is doing roaring business until a stern Hollywood representative (Ghostbusters star Sigourney Weaver, in amusing cameo) arrives to close it down for copyright infringement.

There are some very funny visual moments in the first half of Be Kind Rewind. Gondry pays lovely homage to comedians Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd as magnetised Black sticks to metal objects while trying to walk down the street.

The send-ups of the likes of Driving Miss Daisy and Carrie - and a sequence where Def uses Christmas tinsel to create the ectoplasm in Ghostbusters - will delight movie lovers.

But the film dribbles into scenes of a cheering community that have become so familiar that they have lost all potency. Gondry must know that moments like these are hackwork; the film's second half is so sluggish and plotless that any supposed satiric comment is lost.

That's a mistake that Preston Sturges's great Hollywood comedy Sullivan's Travels, whose shots are slavishly copied by Gondry, would never have made.

It's unfair to criticise the Rewind cast. They do their best with what they've got. Black may duplicate his slacker routine but he's energetic and seemingly willing to be more abrasive.

Store owner Danny Glover and customer Mia Farrow wander through, looking confused. Def is the saving grace.

The rap singer offered solid support in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and 16 Blocks. It's no surprise he carries this film with a relaxed confidence that is the best antidote to Gondry's often odd camera angles and awkward framing.

© 2008 Sun Herald

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