In A Theater Near You - Be Kind Rewind

I really wanted to enjoy this film. After Michel Gondry's brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the solid Science of Sleep, I was expecting better than what I sat through for what seemed like hours (the film was only 1h 40min in reality). Perhaps my expectations were too high and I was not aware of the younger target audience, or perhaps the film was simply not that good.

The film is set in a small New Jersey town, in and around a rundown building which houses Be Kind Rewind, a VHS rental shop which is owned by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) and run with the help of Mike (Mos Def), both of whom live above the shop. They have a number of loyal customers who either are either ignorant of, or refuse to use, DVDs. Those few loyal customers do not bring in much in the way of income however, so Mr. Fletcher leaves the store in Mike's care while he, unbeknownst to Mike, goes on a secret mission to discover the recipe for success from the nearby West Coast Video (Spoiler Alert: They sell DVDs).

One frequent customer and perhaps Mike's only friend, is Jerry (Jack Black), a mechanic who lives around the corner from Be Kind Rewind and right next to a power plant. Jerry thinks the plant is trying to control his mind and decides to sabotage it. He fails, is magnetized, the store's entire stock of tapes is erased, and hijinks ensue.

The film plays out in an entirely predictable, but fun, way. There's nothing really intrinsically wrong with Be Kind... Yes, there are plot-holes, but those can mostly be explained away by the character's small town ignorance, and yes, some of the later plot devices are anything but original, but I believe the film suffers most from being too (as Roger Ebert recently put it) too WHIMSICAL for its own good. Perhaps the film was simply not aimed at the film critic crowd, but rather towards young people and their guardians who are sick of fast-paced, glittery, plastic, explosions, whatever. This film is certainly not that, and is a welcome change from the all-too-common above tendencies of today's "entertainment" industry.

If anyone falls in the aforementioned group, I would Recommend this films, but if you are anyone but said group, this film is Not Recommended.