Be Kind Rewind

Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) should be lauded for his brilliant creativity. In Be Kind Rewind he has made a hilarious movie about the importance of creativity itself. Jerry (Jack Black) has accidentally erased all the VHS tapes in his friend Mike's (Mos Def) store. But the faithful customers want their movies. So when one woman really wants to see Ghostbusters, and the tape is erased, they make their own version starring themselves and some tin foil. Jerry and Mike go on to make many more films, like RoboCop, Driving Miss Daisy, and Rush Hour 2.

The story eventually becomes a David vs. Goliath tale. The guys want to save the video store, and they will do anything to do so. But the video store has videos, VHS, who watches videos anymore? Plus, they are just a mom and pop store in an old neighborhood. How can they compete with the giant Blockbuster-like stores that are popping up everywhere (the ironic thing is that Blockbuster is having the same problem, getting shoved out by the likes of Netflix). The store, also called Be Kind Rewind, has an identity tied to the neighborhood, whereas the giant corporation is bland and has no personality. This can be translated to their creative enteavors as well. Gondry could be saying that these low-budget, hack remakes have more heart and soul than the multi-million dollar studio pictures that they are remaking. Hollywood itself is one big, bland, repetitive corporation, and what we need to do is find people that are actually doing original, cutting-edge things in film. Yet at the same time, the guys are embracing their past (in the form of Fats Wallace, a famous jazz musician). But it is still creative, still original, still full of the neighborhood's personality. The message of this film resounds with what happened this year in regards to the Oscar-winner for best song, Once. Once was a "starving artist" film, in which the musicians/actors did everything out of creativity and originality. Three cheers for another film lauding the creative process and going against the epitome of everything wrong with the apprecation of art in our culture, ie American Idol and everything like it.

Be Kind Rewind not only shows us the importance of artistic originality, it is just flat-out funny. They way they remake the films made me nearly fall out of my seat. Great times.