OK, for most of the country, Be Kind, Rewind has been out for a month. But for whatever reason it just made it to Aberdeen this weekend. Usually it's the "art films" that come here late. Whatever the case may be, if you have a chance to see this movie, go for it. Thumbs up. The film is always amusing and often laugh out loud funny. It also is quite edifying.
Spoiler Warning.
The film stars Danny Glover as Mr. Fletcher, the proprietor of a dumpy Passaic, NJ video store named Be Kind, Rewind. Forget Blue Ray; this store is VHS only. Mos Def is Mike, Mr. Fletcher's young employee and, apparently, heir apparent. Jack Black plays Jerry, a no-account who lives in a camper in his mechanic's lot right next to the power plant. One of the story arcs involves Mr. Fletcher's love of Fat Waller and his claim that Fats was born in the building housing the video store. Mr. Fletcher leaves, ostensibly to go to a Fats Waller gathering, but in reality to study other video stores to figure out what makes them successful (he learns the secret of success for big video stores is renting DVDs, not video, and offering lots of copies of very few titles). You see, he is in trouble with the city of Passaic which wants to condemn his building to build condos. In a familiar plot turn, he has to raise a bunch of money to make improvements or he loses his building.
While Mr. Fletcher is gone, in a failed (and hilarious) attempt to attack the power plant he is sure is controlling his mind, Jerry succeeds only in magnetizing himself. Entering the video store, he proceeds to erase all the video tapes. Mike and Jerry then scheme to keep the store afloat by re-shooting all the videos themselves. They corral local girl Alma to be "the girl" in all these movies (mostly because Jerry refuses to kiss his mechanic, who had been playing all the female roles). Contrary to their expectations, these "sweded" movies take off and the store begins raking in the dough. But they then run afoul with the movie industry, and in one of the movie's funnier scenes, the industry rep, played by Sigorney Weaver, explains they owe billions of dollars and face thousands of years in jail. She then has all the tapes crushed by a bulldozer in front of the store, lamenting, "Somehow we're the bad guys in this."
Their hopes of saving the video store now dashed, the gang decide, with help from the neighborhood, to make a movie about Fats Waller, despite the fact that they now know that Mr. Fletcher made up all his stories linking Fats to Passaic. So they decide to just make it up (including the suggestion by neighborhood kids that Fats Waller's brothers were all killed in a gangland slaying).
The chief thing to recommend the movie is that it is funny. The lame attempt by Jerry and Mike to break into a rival video store is itself worth the price of admission (let's just say they do not pick the path of least resistance). I'd say the movie is more amusing than hilarious, but it does have great comedic moments.
The film is also fairly clean. Why it gets a PG-13 rating is beyond me. There is one "s" word, but the film consciously avoids the "f" word, substituting "mucking" instead, and this is only a couple times.
The film is also quite edifying and endearing. The previews we saw before Be Kind illustrate one reason why Hollywood is in trouble. With the exception of Superhero Movie, a parody film so formulaic it even stars Leslie Nielsen, the other films appeared not only to be totally derivative but also deeply cynical and/or vulgar. Why would I pay through the nose so I can have some pampered Hollywood elitists tell me how rotten the world is and do so in the crudest manner possible? Be Kind is a "feel good" movie without being saccharine. In addition to being funny, the film is thought-provoking for the following three reasons.
1. Despite having an interracial cast, the subject of race is virtually never brought up. There are only a small handful of points in the film when you are made aware of racial difference (see for instance the pic above of Mike and Jerry attempting to remake Driving Miss Daisy). In an example of the film's indifference to race, Mia Farrow plays an local character who has a mother-like relationship to young men of various races who appear to live in her apartment. This taken for granted an not commented upon (or explained, for that matter). One of the best scenes of the film is toward the end when the gang watches their Fats Waller documentary. The camera quite consciously shows a group composed of various races and backgrounds sitting together and laughing as they watch a movie. This is a post-racial society where, as the term "post-racial" suggests, race is not really a consideration. They are truly color blind. This is Martin Luther King's dream and Jeremiah Wright's nightmare.
2. The film considers seriously (albeit through comedy) the power of story telling and its ability to bring people together. The film suggests that people need stories, real or made-up, to give them a sense of who they are and something to believe in. Be Kind also makes the case for film as a powerful medium of communal story telling. Whether it is filmed or otherwise, Be Kind instructs us to start telling stories that bring people together in a common identity and that inspire us to be better than we are. That, my friends, is a powerful indictment of Hollywood.
3. Connected to the idea of story, this film is very interested in the past, in history, as one of those narrative styles. Through the person of Fats Waller, the characters develop a knowledge of who they are and of what happened before them. At one point Mike laments the fact that the neighborhood kids know nothing about Fats Waller, a man Mike perceives as an important part of their neighborhood's history. A puzzle presented by the film, then, is what do you do when you find out that your history isn't what you thought it was, i.e., that Fats Waller wasn't really born in the Be Kind store building? The film's solution is to then consciously make up a history to fit with what people need/want. That solution is problematic, although not without its merits. It certainly is the enemy of cynicism. So the title Be Kind, Rewind may actually reveal an attitude toward history ("rewind your mind"), not just a recommendation about video tape etiquette.
Be Kind, Rewind may have already left your city's theaters. But when it comes out on video give a watch, on VHS if you can.
Recent Comments