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Be Kind Rewind [2007] | ![Be Kind Rewind [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512Ww-7cdaL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Michel Gondry
Actors: Jack Black, Mia Farrow, Melonie Diaz, Danny Glover, Mos Def
Studio: Pathe Distribution
Category: DVD
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £9.74
You Save: £10.25 (51%)
New (12) Used (6) from £8.89
Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 804
Format: Pal
Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Region: 2
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 97 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5060002836040
ASIN: B0015VI34S
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: June 30, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New & Sealed, Shipped From The UK
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Amazon.co.uk Review
A daffy, adorable, and very funny celebration of DIY spirit, Be Kind Rewind stars Mos Def (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) as Mike, a clerk at a failing video store in a rundown New Jersey neighborhood. When his friend Jerry (Jack Black), who's been magnetised in a power station accident, wipes all of the videotapes blank, the two of them decide to recreate the movies themselves rather than face the store's owner (Danny Glover). The pure charm of Be Kind Rewind can't be captured in that spare plot synopsis. The blend of the movie's great cast (which also includes Mia Farrow, Melonie Diaz of American Son, and Sigourney Weaver) and pitch-perfect writing and direction from writer-director Michel Gondry (director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, writer-director of The Science of Sleep) culminates in a truly delightful movie--sweet without being saccharine, richly comic without irony or sarcasm (which, given the presence of Black, is surprising), sentimental without losing sight of the hard edges of life. Mos Def turns in a standout performance, deeply sympathetic without a moment of grandstanding. An absolutely winning film. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Ughhh Jack Black takes over again August 15, 2008
benmully
The idea behind this film is sound, ropey funny 20 min remakes of classic old films. It didn't matter how bad they were as you'd recognise them from their catch phrases. While it gets to these bits early on in the film, they are funny, but don't last long! It then gets back to Jack Black taking over the film in his usual overpowering and annoying way. The rest of the film is about Black making a film about a fictional jazz character. Remind me to avoid all Jack Black films in the future, as he's annoying and as untalented as Ricky Jervais!
 ..a film made by and for anyone whose ever loved a film August 14, 2008
Mr. M. A. Reed (Somewhere, GB)
Be Kind Rewind is an unsung lament to a sadly dying art. In the same way Cinema Paradiso looked back to a golden age, the time when the community was gathered around the flickering screen and united by the common spectacle, this manages to evoke that dying memory of the time when people would clap at the screen and when screenings sold out.
The determindedly dated plot, set, I estimate in summer 2001, sees Mos Def and Jack Black fighting against the format war of VHS vs DVD, the Little Man vs The Unfeeling Corporate, our lives as they are vs the reality we create for ourselves.
Black and Def cut a wonderful, off kilter tone in this quirky semi-comedy. As with Gondry's other films, the humour is a deadpan, bizarre interpretation of our existing reality : when one of the leads becomes 'magnetised', scenes are interrupted with bizarre interference (as if we are watching a videotape on an old TV), and random objects fly around the scene dependent upon their qualities. The central plot of the film is charming : based on the theme that we define our reality, and take the existing modern mythology of cinema, and recast them in their own light.
There are some scenes which had me in tears of laughter : after you've seen it, the phrase 'NightVision' may never mean the same thing again. The charming ingenuity of the central conceit allows a large number of us who grew up watching TV-dupes and full screen VHS tapes of 'classic' movies like Ghostbusters and Firefox and the long-forgotten Red Dawn to both mock these films, and nostalgically relive them with the benefit of our notoriously unreliable memories and our childhood understandings. After all, would Star Wars have been so good if the first time we had seen we were 27 and not 7? It's a question no one will ever be able to answer.
The film shifts tone and becomes an eulogy to the dying breed of communal film-making and neighbourhood unity in its final strait. Somewhat oddly, the film ends on a morally ambigious tone which fails to satisfy beyond creating a temporary emotion : what the viewer is left with is an uneven and occasonally frustrating experience that is charming, funny and meaningful in a way that very few films even try to achieve, let alone sustain. Be Kind, Rewind is a film made by and for anyone whose ever loved a film.
Mos Def, Jack Black, And A Lot Of Imagination August 11, 2008
DL Productions UK (Merseyside, UK)
Michel Gondry is well known for being a fantasist, with his very eventful films and music videos. You only need to look at Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind to know this, and of course his music video work - The Work Of Director Michel Gondry. This is very different, with Mos Def, comedian Jack Black and a whole lot of imagination.
Jack Black plays Jerry - a drop out who lives in a caravan - he's a bit of a anarchist, well likes to think he is, and so goes of to do some dumb vandalism of a power station. He comes off worse, and becomes electromagnetic. Mike (Mos Def) works in the video store (Be Kind, Rewind) and unsuspectingly allows Jerry in, to his horror he blanks the tapes.
So what do the dynamic duo decide to do? Yeah you guessed it, remake the films, with a very funny twist. The funny thing about this is that the punters are not annoyed and like the new versions, a queue soon emerges and things look good. Not everything is rosy for them though.
This is a great piece of fantasy from a master of the genre, Mos Def and Jack Black work great here and the comedy is good. It does get a bit tedious at points, but the end justifies the means. The comedic video making is good - only Gondry could make this film so surreal though.
With Michel Gondry, the extras are usually good, and this time he interviews people in the city where he filmed the movie, and a couple of extra spots. They're interesting to say the least, but at least there's something enjoyable after the movie, something that a lot of films don't have.
Worth a look, that's for sure, but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea.
 Not as bad as people say it is! (Small spoiler alert) August 7, 2008
Mickey Rose (London)
This film doesn't deserve 5 stars, but that does not mean it deserves 1 star. Some of the previous viewers seem to be working in black and white and don't realise that there are shades of grey too.
The remakes are amusing and I found the fact that he sings the ghostbusters theme tune wrong pretty funny too as we all know how it goes don't we?
The remakes are so awful they are funny and that is kind of where the movie goes. Someone mentioned that it starts to improve once they start making their own original film but I would say it starts to get a bit too cheesy near the end, where the whole community works together.
Comparing it to the spice girls movie is as idoitic as playing with a hairdryer in the bath. The film is easily worth viewing once.
This seems to be a film that people can't agree on so borrow a copy and trust your own opinion because there are too many mixed reviews.
Can you see the join? July 27, 2008
doublegone (scotland)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is one of the most extraordinary films I have ever seen. Extraordinary because two thirds of it are really awful while a third of it is quite beautiful. Its like a terrible writer and director were replaced by geniuses part way through making it. You might be actually able to spot the moment on screen when everything takes off. If you have managed to stay with it until then, because make no mistake the start and bulk of this film is quite atrocious. Terrible script, rubbish acting (Mos Def is the worst offender). Some of the the dialogue between he and Black could have been written by a child. I began to wonder if it was being made bad on purpose to serve some point. I'm still not sure. Mia Farrow and Sigourney Weaver wander in to this and you think, Jesus what are they doing in this piece of crap?
There are movies like Rockschool which are basically maintained purely on Black's own self-belief. You couldn't imagine anyone else pulling them off. Yet for most of this film, even he fails to save the day.
The premise is that left to look after a video store, the hapless pair of Mos Def and Black manage to wipe all the films after Black gets magnetised in an electrocution incident. Armed with a home camera they set about remaking the movies. The only saving grace of this part of the movie is one or two genuinely laugh out loud moments as they set about recreating key scenes from Ghostbusters, Driving Miss Daisy and other blockbusters. The goofy results become a cult hit.
Where the film takes off and becomes a thing of beauty and wonder, is when the pair enlist the help of friends to make their own movie. The video store is under threat of redevelopment but if they can show that a famous jazzman once lived there perhaps it can be saved. And so they set about mocking up old footage from before World War II. It becomes an evocative portrait of the neighbourhood at this point, and the sort of community seldom reflected by Hollywood. This part of the film, right at the end, is truelly magical, and I would have no hesitation in giving it five stars. Sadly its tagged on to over an hour of one or two star material. Its so good though that I would actually recommend watching this film. And if you do make sure you stick with it all the way through.
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