"I'm Bill Murray. You're everybody else."
I really don't remember when I started to laugh first time during watching another funny stuff by the overtalented Michel Gondry, but at this point (re-shooting Ghost Busters), definitely. Because this film is a funny one (the imdb says comedy & sci-fi), funnier than the contemporary so-called comedies. But at least wiser, shows more respect for its audience, gives more chance for the imagination. Actually these are the keywords to describe Gondry's oeuvre.
The director claimed in an interview that he is still a child who physically grown up and has a chance now to transform his childish imagination and weird dreams into a movie. This wouldn't guarantee anything yet but his milestone-like videoclips (the best videoclip ever made is from him too: Cibo Matto: Sugar Water) and more and more convincing films (from the "Björk-like" Human Nature (2001) until this one) proves his real talent over and over again. But what are the elements of this talent? His latest Be kind Rewind summarizes all of them. To understand them I need to admit that his movies are far from being perfect (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was the closest to that). What I really like in him is the way, the mode how he is approaching the realm of moving images. In his case we are definitely talking about moving images: his attitude towards the material is that sympathic-naive but more honourable one which almost died out from the film business. He is that kind of child which helps us to be a child again. And that is good.
"Solo mission!"
To be a child is a feeling full with nostalgy. Rewind in time. Watching Jerry's (first the Tenacious D and now this... I'm really afraid that I'm gonna like this idiot Jack Black) and Mike's (Mos Def, who is getting better at front of the camera than the microphone) crazy story we are in 2008 but our imagination goes back in time to remember the rule of the VHS video stores (rewind!), to meet Dr Venkman from the Ghost Busters (1984!) again (Sigurney Weaver's comeback is a perfect reference), or to chew over the question of the DVDs as a "future" threat on our most precious VHS collection.
"I don't need it on DVD. I need it on... I need it on VHS. Yeah, well, you know, they said that about laser discs too so..."
This would be already funny in a movie which plays its story in the '80s, but Gondry's idea is far better than that. Jerry and Mike represent ourselves from the eighties who have to prevail in 2008. They are like Poiré's heroes in Les Visiteurs (1993), but somehow in the videofreaks' characters the fun is less important than the nostalgy mixed with homage for a fainting period of our lives (which is at the same time a slight reference to our situation between continously changing technical formats, too). The almost overemotionalized end of the film doesn't leave any doubts about these feelings.
As I said, the film isn't perfect at all. It is "just" creative (among the uncountable innovative ideas my favourite is an extra-diegetic joke of magnetizing Gondry's camera), enthusiastic (I'm preparing to write an essay about the connection between Gondry's attitude and the cult phenomenon), funny (check the "Robocop" picture) and ... visually plus even emotionally beautiful. And I even didn't talk about Fats Waller...
9/10
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