Movie Review: Be Kind Rewind

There are certain films for which you can only imagine the producer’s face when given the one-line pitch by the director. "John Cusack crawls into John Malkovich’s head", "Keanu Reeves plays an architect", and now "Jack Black and Mos Def remake Ghostbusters and RoboCop with a video camera."

But that is essentially the plot of Be Kind Rewind, the latest film from French maverick Michael Gondry, who previously brought us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and last year’s The Science Of Sleep.

Black and Def are given the job of looking after a crumbling VHS-only video store when owner Danny Glover goes away for a few days. Unfortunately, Black gets magnetised while committing an act of environmental terrorism and somehow wipes every tape in the store. So the bungling duo take it upon themselves to remake the movies, using just themselves and an old camera.

It’s sometimes hard for directors to use Jack Black without having the star overshadow everything else – as funny as he is, the guy can't help but mug for the camera every time it passes in front of him. Luckily, Gondry knows how to use Black's talents to the movies advantage and creates the perfect combination of the Jack Black comedy and the Michel Gondry movie.

Atlhough Be Kind Rewind is his most mainstream film to date, Gondry is still exploring the walls between fantasy and reality, and gives it the loose, thrown-together feel of his previous films. And Mos Def provides the perfect foil to Black’s lunacy.

Although the sequences in which our heroes remake their favourite movies provide the biggest laughs, Gondry is smart enough to know that one joke can't sustain an entire movie. The battle to save Glover’s shop from demolition actually provides the film with a surprising amount of heart, and it ultimately emerges as a story about local community as much as it is about arsing around with a camcorder.

Great stuff, and whoever cast Mia Farrow as a batty, middle-aged woman surrounded by dozens of adopted children deserves some kind of award.