Be Kind Rewind

When conspiracy theorist goofball Jack Black demagnetizes all the rental tapes in a relic of a neighborhood video store in Passaic, N.J. (where DVD is merely a rumor), he hits the streets with his video clerk buddy (Mos Def) and a secondhand video camera to shoot their own digest versions of Hollywood hits. The scrappy, scruffy little film would be just another crazy skit-comedy in the hands of most directors. For Michel Gondry, it becomes a kind of folk art spin on Hollywood gloss and a tribute to his own preferred style of filmmaking, with imagination and ingenuity in place of big budgets and splashy production values. The neighborhood embraces the new "Sweded" versions (as they call the process) of familiar movies and eventually joins in the process, becoming both audience and stock company to the backroom mini-studio run by and starring Black, Mos Def and new partner Melonie Diaz. It's the analog equivalent of viral video with a cult following that reaches to New York. Gondry's film is cut from the same cloth, shot with a looseness that feels somewhat improvised, as if the performers are feeling their way through the script and settling in to their characters. Some scenes wander (and at times so does the camera, for no apparent reason) and the humor skids all over the place, but the affably goofy sense of humor and the warmth of the community that Gondry and his cast create give the modest comedy some major pleasures. Danny Glover and Mia Farrow co-star.

Features both wide-screen and full-screen versions and a single featurette. The 10-minute "Passaic Mosaic" is a behind-the-scenes featurette, not on the making of the film but on the neighborhood in which it was shot, a little survey of the people and places that became a part of the production. It's a lovely little piece with a sensibility in the same key as the film. But it still would have been nice to see outtakes from the "Sweded" film remakes and Gondry's own "Sweded" version of the trailer (which was already released online). Also available in Blu-ray format.