When it comes to ingenious visual effects, Michel Gondry is a god, as anyone can know by watching his commercials and music videos. Full length movies are another ballgame, and his film work seems at least unequal: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was one of the best movies of 2003 (if not the best) and a perfect example of how a great script (by Charlie Kaufman, who is finishing Synecdoche New York, his first movie as a director) can be taken higher by a great director. On the other hand, Human Nature was less interesting and the Science Sleep, even if it had a very personal and emotional touch, was a bit boring.
The idea of his new picture Be Kind Rewind is wicked: an electromagnetized dude (Jack Black) erases the tapes in his friend’s (Mos Def) videostore. Therefore the two buddies decide to reshoot movies themselves with an old school handycam. The shooting scenes are great, Gondry imagines the reshoot of Ghostbusters, King Kong or Robocop with lots of tenderness for the originals and many of these visual tricks he likes so much. Apart from these enjoyable moments, the result is pretty fisappointing. Be Kind Rewind is a low-level comedy with an annoying actor, Jack Black, and an even more annoying non-actor, Mos Def. Danny Glover and Mia Farrow don’t get a chance to bring up the level of acting.
In Eternal Sunshine… the direction was at the service of an excellent story. Unfortunately Gondry is not as a good a writer as a visual magician. Beyond the cute and funny replay of famous movies in a Gondryesque style, there was an interesting concept underlying: the appropriation of cinema by the public. At some point in the movie, Black and Mos Def start to include the videostore customers into the cast and the crew. The people start making movies for themselves instead of silently enduring the stuff they are fed with by the major studios. Unfortunately this idea is only exploited in an emotional way through a little movie about the local glorious Jazzman Fats Waller, which is smart and endearing, like homemade Gondry movies can be, but fails to carry across a strong and relevant message about today’s cinema.
PS: I can’t believe they changed the title to Soyez sympa, rembobinez in French. Absurd.
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