"Be Kind Rewind"

"Be Kind Rewind" is nostalgic for videotapes. This should alert you immediately to an excess of whimsy, because everyone knows that videotapes sucked - they were bulky, the image was scratched and it always cut off the widescreen, rewinding took an agonizingly long time. Anyone who remembers videotapes with fondness has overdosed on nostalgia at the expense of common sense. At least be adult enough to be a true film elitist, like every film teacher who rants about how "The Big Sleep" and "El Cid" are only good on the big screen, in 35 mm, which makes tobacco smoke glow like liquid diamond and shows you what the world would like if God had the forethought to create it in Technicolor. Fuck videotapes. If you like them more than DVDs, you're a character in a movie that wishes it was directed by Wes Anderson.

So "Be Kind Rewind" is guilty of whimsy, which is for indie films what superpower explosion sequels are for Hollywood. Whimsy all but ruined Michel Gondry's last movie, "The Science of Sleep," which had all the visual invention of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" with none of the narrative strength, the deeply felt emotion, the toughness. Like Gael Garcia Bernal in "Sleep," the two protagonists in "Rewind" are wannabe artists in love with amateur special effects - Gondry's stock-in-trade. The plot - video store employees have to refilm their whole library after a freak magnetic radiation accident leaves them blank - is little more than a flimsy excuse for Gondry to remake "2001," "Rush Hour 2," "Driving Miss Daisy," "Ghostbusters," and more, on a shoestring budget. Flimsy whimsy - kill me now. It's incredibly precious and often cloying, especially when everyone in town wants to join in - there's a sense of Capra-esque ultra-populism to how everyone, from the cute girl who works at the laundry to the car mechanic, wants nothing more than to play dress-up and act.

Still, if it's all entirely too cute, it's also rarely boring. Jack Black and Mos Def play the filmmaking buddies and they make a sweet man-couple - Black, who everyone but me hates now, plays his trademark angry grin to great effect, and Mos Def has such a nice little romantic scene with the laundry girl - played by Melonie Diaz, far and away the best thing about this movie - that I wished Gondry followed up on that plot. Or, indeed, followed up on any plot. Toward the end, the movie turns listless and becomes an almost unbearable "We're gonna save the video store from the stupid construction company that wants to turn it into a condo" movie. The end plays like "Cinema Paradiso" for the video store. Blah, blah, blah. You could do worse for a comedy at this time of year than a spoof-remake-mash-up by a genuinely talented filmmaker. (Hey, when's the last time you saw a movie that starts with a mockumentary about Fats Waller?)

Now, Mr. Gondry: I recommend you find a script that's not autobiographically written by you, and make another real movie, already.