Mos Def and Jack Black ‘Swede’ the classic Driving Miss Daisy
Director Michel Gondry’s first two films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, are cinematic love-letters of the highest order. Both films approach the complexities of romance with endless creativity, using high concepts (memory tampering in the former, whimsy bordering on insanity in the latter) to explore art’s most common theme in new ways.
For his third effort, the director doesn’t tackle anything as heady as all that, but Be Kind, Rewind is every bit as much about love as Gondry’s previous efforts. This time, though, it’s all about his love of film. The result feels a bit lightweight compared to his previous work, but Rewind is still a gleeful bit of pure entertainment.
The flimsy plot — Mos Def and Jack Black need to remake all the movies in Def’s video store after Black unwittingly erases them — is really just an excuse for Gondry and his two stars to run amok through movie history. Everything from Ghostbusters and Robocop to Driving Miss Daisy gets remade (or “sweded,” as the movie prefers) in Def and Black’s mad dash to keep up with the unexpected demand for their new flicks. The Sweded movies are absurdly entertaining to watch, and the “behind the scenes” glimpses at the imaginatively cheap special effects are a veritable textbook for budding no-budget filmmakers — Rewind is definitely the most straight-up fun film Gondry’s made.
Things get muddled when the director starts adding morals into the story. The Sweded movies are held up as improvements because they have a heart that’s lacking from big studio movies, but they’re also done with complete affection for the originals. The message seems to be that big-budget means bad, except when it’s good — a confusion that’ll be familiar to any filmgoer with fond memories of the blockbusters they saw when they were kids. That’s not even getting into the movie’s broader social messages, which run the gamut from “communities should be more involved in their art” (yay!) to “lying about history is good for society” (huh?).
As confusing as the messages can get, Gondry’s love of film never gets lost in the mix. It’s there in every frame, every hand-crafted special effect and even in every mildly awkward performance. There’s something absolutely wonderful about Rewind’s shoe-string response to the current crop of CGI spectacles, and it’d be surprising to see anyone leave the theatre without at least some tinge of desire to buy a camcorder and put their own spin on Commando. Still, it’s hard to watch the film’s finale, which shows the power of creativity when it’s directed at more than just remaking someone else’s work, and not wish Gondry had taken his own advice.
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