I'll Be Bill Murray and You Be Everybody Else
I've taken the opportunity this weekend to catch up on some films I've been meaning to watch. My Virgin+ recording of Run Fat Boy Run cut out 35 minutes before the end, which I saw as an act of kindness. A truly dreadful film with a plotline that is impossible to care about featuring a great deal of idiotic slapstick. Mercifully Be Kind Rewind was much better.The story focuses on Mike (Mos Def), who is left in charge of the titular VHS rental shop (which will be demolished unless $60,000 can be found) while the owner Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover) leaves town to celebrate the life of the famous pianist Fats Waller, who according to him lived on the site of Be Kind Rewind in Passaic, New Jersey. While he is gone, Mike's friend Jerry (Jack Black delivering a typical performance as an enthusiastic manboy) inadvertantly erases all the tapes having become magnetised after attempting to sabotage a power plant. I have to concede that my disbelief needed a considerable period of suspension. The two then decide to replace them by filming their own versions of all the films in the shop in a process they describe as 'sweding'.
The film is not often laugh out loud funny but you can't help but smile at the footage from the series of low-fi remakes with Ghostbusters and Rush Hour 2 as the highlights. Black's misguided portrayal of Daisy from Driving Miss Daisy is also a great moment. Amongst this celebration of all that is amateurish, shots are aimed at authority and at the perceived soullessness of the big local rental store that had modernized and upgraded to DVDs a long ago. As it progresses, the movie becomes more and more about community, as local demand for the remakes becomes huge and it looks as though Be Kind Rewind will reach the $60,000 target until they are scuppered by copyright violation charges.
Nevertheless, the people of the town eventually come together to make a film about Fats Waller despite the revelation that Waller never lived in Passaic. Having studied social history in my final year at university, the final section of the film was of particular interest to me and provided an example of citizens taking ownership of history and how its facts are altered to support the needs of the local people. Thus for the hundreds of filmmakers who involve themselves in the project, Waller becomes a symbol of the spirit of the town.
Throughout the film, the story told is frequently shambling and illogical, but also greatly touching. Thankfully, the film doesn't resort to a conventional Hollywood ending where the shop gets a reprieve and everything is hunkey dorey. Ultimately Be Kind Rewind, the store that rents VHS tapes for a dollar a day, must go, an antiquated building supporting an antiquated medium. But not before the film is screened in the shop and in the neighbourhood, proving that the local spirit of the area remains intact. A sweet little film.
The film is not often laugh out loud funny but you can't help but smile at the footage from the series of low-fi remakes with Ghostbusters and Rush Hour 2 as the highlights. Black's misguided portrayal of Daisy from Driving Miss Daisy is also a great moment. Amongst this celebration of all that is amateurish, shots are aimed at authority and at the perceived soullessness of the big local rental store that had modernized and upgraded to DVDs a long ago. As it progresses, the movie becomes more and more about community, as local demand for the remakes becomes huge and it looks as though Be Kind Rewind will reach the $60,000 target until they are scuppered by copyright violation charges.
Nevertheless, the people of the town eventually come together to make a film about Fats Waller despite the revelation that Waller never lived in Passaic. Having studied social history in my final year at university, the final section of the film was of particular interest to me and provided an example of citizens taking ownership of history and how its facts are altered to support the needs of the local people. Thus for the hundreds of filmmakers who involve themselves in the project, Waller becomes a symbol of the spirit of the town.
Throughout the film, the story told is frequently shambling and illogical, but also greatly touching. Thankfully, the film doesn't resort to a conventional Hollywood ending where the shop gets a reprieve and everything is hunkey dorey. Ultimately Be Kind Rewind, the store that rents VHS tapes for a dollar a day, must go, an antiquated building supporting an antiquated medium. But not before the film is screened in the shop and in the neighbourhood, proving that the local spirit of the area remains intact. A sweet little film.
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