Be Kind and DE-stroy

I was skeptical of Be Kind Rewind from the beginning. A movie about a video store owner Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) who still rents VHS... because, you know, it is secretly a superior technology and jeez have you seen the high prices of those DVD players? Some go for as much as $75. His right hand man Mike (Mos Def) is friends with Jerry (Jack Black) who lives by heavy power lines which he is convinced are creating tumors in his head yet he continues to live by them in... get this... a mobile home. The operative word here being mobile. Meaning he could move it if he wanted, but he doesn't. See... that's funny. Mr. Fletcher leaves town and asks Mike to be in charge while he's gone. And that's when the hi jinx ensue. Jerry becomes magnetized from all the electricity and he erases every VHS tape in the store. In an effort to keep the store running, Mike and Jerry make their own versions of the movies on a VHS Camcorder. Let me say that again, a VHS Camcorder. They didn't have to break any glass to fetch it out of the Museum Of Old Fashioned Electronic Equipment, it was just there by Mr. Fletcher's desk. And damn if everyone doesn't like them more than the original because you know, Camcorders are better than those big clunky film recorder thingys and who editors when you can do it in camera.

Evidently Michel Gondry believes his audience is as stupid as the people who still have functioning VHS players because this movie is completely void of anything resembling entertainment. The character development is awkward. The acting strange. The direction amateur. And most importantly, it's not funny. Not in the least. It's obvious that Gondry was going for something different here. But what? Complete and utter isolation from his audience? This movie was so bad it could not be ignored. Could not be passed off as simply just bad. The more I watched, the more angry I got. I had to leave for fear that I might set the theater on fire. This was not a cast of nobodies directed by someone who had turned in hack projects before. This movie should have been something. And that's probably what made me the most angry - a collection of talent like this with the result of Be Kind Rewind is unforgivable. People need to be punished for this kind of work and I have some thoughts.

Let's start with The Greenlighter who gave this piece of shit the thumbs up. He/she should have both his/her thumbs broken so they can never greenlight another picture again.

Then there's Jack Black. His agent should be fired and Jack Black should be forced to have a cat scan because I'm convinced a lobotomy occurred overnight that is affecting his judgement in movie choices. This guy has yet to even come close to the promise he showed in High Fidelity.

The producer Georges Bermann should be beaten with a big red flag and taught to raise it when he sees a movie like this start to fall off the tracks as it did continuously.

And then there's Michel Gondry. As the writer and director of this mess, his punishment should be the worst. First, he should be forced to watch Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind to see how quirky characters can function in real life situations and still be entertaining. Next, he should be forced to direct Daddy Day Care 3 just so he doesn't fuck up like this again. Then, he should travel the world and collect every print of this film. He should personally refund the price of the ticket to everyone who saw it and then personally apologize and promise to do better. Then the movie should go straight to VHS for the 3 people out there who still have a working player to rent and watch.

Somewhere in this pile I'm sure there's a message about the state of entertainment today and how people are craving something so new and so different that they will settle for shit on VHS. But in the process Gondry created something worse than any of that and tried to pass it off as profound art.