This comedy-drama written and directed by Michel Gondry is really worth seeing. All movies in a rental store are accidentally erased. In order to stay in business and do not let the owner down, store clerks decide to shoot movies by themselves. Their versions of the movies are hit! In order to prevent the building where the store is located, they decide to shoot their own movie. Funny and warm. Main characters seem to be authentic. It was really nice to see

Jack Black and Mos Def play the two main leads in this bizarre comedy that is definitely heaping piles of quantity over any kind of quality.So the story goes that Mike (Def) is a worker in a little VHS rental corner store, owned by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover). After Mr. Fletcher leaves the store in Mike's hands for the duration of his trip to a memorial, Mike's friend Jerry (Black) wanders in and promptly erases all the tapes due to having become magnetized in a power plant accident. Because why not. And now they're in a jam because people still have to be able to rent the tapes, the store being in financial troubles as it is. The solution? Film your own zero-budget replicas of course.Okay, that doesn't sound that bad. It could work. The problem I have with this film is that it doesn't know how to focus on few key things. Instead it tries to throw everything and the kitchen sink at us and hopes that something sticks. First we have the buddy comedy between two friends, then we have the weird magnet parahuman ability Jerry acquires (which is barely addressed after the first scene), the financial troubles of the store, the circumstances of the poor New Jersey neighbourhood, the state of the VHS versus DVD, and last but not least this weird fixation the film has with this dead real- life jazz musician Fats Wallers, which ends up stealing the whole film towards the end with no explanation given for the weird shift in focus nor mood.And sure, there are comedies that have no focus, wandering around freely, while still managing to work quite well. Monty Python comes to mind. But with those you usually have something of an overarching plot, which is then littered with bizarre details. The story of King Arthur. The story of not-Jesus. This movie could be said to be about saving the store through bizarre events, but it's not immediately apparent from the start and the ending would argue that it's about quite something else. Plus with Monty Python the details are so far out of the left field that you don't even try to make any kind of sense out of them. Here the movie teeters just on the edge of almost having internal logic, but simply failing at it. Which is much more frustrating.In the end Be Kind Rewind didn't leave much of an impression with me. Black and Def had some funny moments, but the overall structure was too chaotic for my tastes and the story wasn't all that interesting. Worth a watch if you're a die-hard fan of Black, otherwise there are better movies out there.

This has become a sort of cult classic in recent times, so I thought i'd give it a watch. What a waste of time that was. It's got a very likable cast, and yet the script isn't that funny, and the film drags, despite actually having quite a short running time in the first place. I went into this film with an open mind, but in the end I didn't find myself caring about any of the characters as they were so thinly written.The central premise is good, but there are just too many moments of dullness that you really don't end up caring whether they save the video shop or not.This will not be a film i'd rush to see again.

Be Kind Rewind is another quirky film directed by Michel Gondry, who directed the offbeat comedy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This is a film that lacks big special effects, but I would call this is a visual treat anyhow. The way the town of Passaic was depicted and how the fake films were made were a good treat for the eyes. The story itself isn't all that bad and is really interesting.Gondry's film is about a struggling VHS rental business whose building is about to get demolished, After a freak accident which involves the tapes being erased, one of the workers and his oddball friend come up with the scheme to make their own versions of each tape and make good money off it.The acting may have been somewhat weak. I normally like Jack Black, but he was mostly annoying. He did have some amusing moments though. Mos Def was pretty good, nothing special. I always liked Danny Glover as an actor and he gives another fine performance here.Overall, this is a good, visual film that has a very interesting concept. All the films that were being remade in this film were the best because I have actually seen all those films. A tighter screenplay and better acting could have made this film even better, but it's still a good film to enjoy. I rate this film 8/10.