I'm sad to have to bring you the news of how terrible this is. I'm sad because Michel Gondry has directed two films very dear to my heart, Dave Chappelle's Block Party and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Both of those made my top ten in their respective years. He also directed something called Science of Sleep, which was truly awful. So then, to recap, after this effort he's batting .500. Oh, I remember the other reason I'm sad this was so dismal - the concept is tremendous.

The concept, and truly you must have seen the trailer by now as the movie has been delayed for ages, is "Sweding" movies -- taking videotapes that have been erased and using Mos Def and Jack Black to recreate them. Comedy should ensue. And it does! Only the "Sweding" is really only about 15 total minutes of the film and it's not worth the effort it takes to get there. The movies "Sweded" include Ghostbusters, Driving Miss Daisy, and Robocob. A few more are handled in montage fashion. Boyz in the Hood is tackled for a chuckle too. As I said before they should have made the movie 85% of this and 15% of a very poor dramatic plot line involving Danny Glover.

Essentially Be Kind Rewind devolves into a fanciful tale about either a.) Fats Waller or b.) How we should all stop watching movies and start making them ourselves; then the whole neighborhood would watch them! It's truly an odd deal to behold. Not funny, but dripping with sentiment instead - the worst of both worlds.

I can't recommend this to Jack Black fans. Same goes for Mos Def fans. Ditto on Michel Gondry. I'm a fan of all three and yet I didn't laugh and came out annoyed by the whole premise. There were tons of logic problems but those could have been forgiven if the movie was remotely funny. But that seemingly wasn't the goal here.

Grade: D

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