And the film ought to be funny, with Mike and Jerry recreating those films as home movies. But somehow it’s not, the laughs are very thin on the ground.
2 Comments
03/19/08
Be Kind Rewind (2008)
65
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:124
Fresh:81
Rotten:43
Average Rating:6.3/10
Australian Theatrical Release:
Mar 20, 2008 Wide
US Box Office: $11,028,439
Synopsis: Music-video-director-turned-auteur Michel Gondry continues to charm with his low-tech offering, BE KIND REWIND. Set in dreary Passaic, New Jersey, the comedy centers on two of the town's residents:... [More]
Reviews for Be Kind Rewind
1 - 20 (sorted by rotten rating; Australian critics are listed first)
Top CriticBrilliant ideas dance on the high side of Creative Street, but Michel Gondry's outlandish premise doesn't stretch far enough to go the distance.
03/16/08
Top CriticThe remake/parody sequences are outstanding, but Black’s all-over-the-place mania and Mos Def’s bland orphan hero don’t quite tie the rest of the picture together. Still, it has heart.
03/20/08
Top CriticThe fake-movie vignettes are a delight to watch, and they would have made for great music videos or short films. What they don’t do is hold together a movie where the characters are forgettable and the situations are contrived.
02/20/08
Most of Be Kind Rewind feels as silly and undisciplined as the mini-movies cooked up by its hapless heroes.
02/19/08
Top CriticPerhaps Gondry realized the sum wasn't going to be greater than its parts and just left it at this: two halves, one more intriguing than the other, that don't add up to a coherent whole.
02/21/08
Whimsy overwhelms this sweetly innocuous tribute to DIY video - which is hobbled enough by its core premise of guys shooting their own versions of popular movies on VHS.
02/22/08
Be Kind Rewind should gather dust on both DVD and VHS shelves.
08/01/08
Unlike Eternal Sunshine, in which Gondry achieved real poignancy about a different kind of erasing, Be Kind Rewind falls into the same category as his The Science of Sleep: It's too silly, and straining too hard to be weird.
02/20/08
Takes a clever concept and cobbles a weak story around it.
02/22/08
Top CriticGondry might think he’s parodying dumb comedies in which poor people rally to save beloved institutions from foreclosure -- but too often Be Kind Rewind just resembles them.
02/19/08
...the lack of subtlety with which Gondry has imbued the latter half of the proceedings ensures that the film is ultimately an extraordinarily tough slog indeed.
02/21/08
Cute but a little empty, Be Kind Remind boasts an original premise without the clarity of writing and character dimension to back it up.
02/21/08
Arguably the weakest and silliest of Gondry's films, this one-note comedy is basically a short stretched to the limits of a feature-length movie that even reliable pros like Jack Black can't rescue.
01/21/08
What a foul junkyard of Quirk it is!
08/27/09
The level of foolishness here is simply too high, and the execution so slapdash that the result doesn't seem so much a parody of amateurishness as an example of it.
02/21/08
A comedy hobbled by a preposterous plot and a phony finale.
02/20/08
A would-be heart-tugging, inspiring paean to the do-it-yourself ethic/aesthetic and its concomitant community-building powers, the latest film from visual lo-fi innovator Michel Gondry is slight and finally unconvincing, alas.
02/20/08
The trouble with this movie about amateur film-makers is that the entire film comes across as amateurish.
02/24/08
Arguably the biggest problem with Be Kind Rewind is that Gondry never stops experimenting, even when the experimentation works against the movie's best interests.
02/20/08
Latest News for Be Kind Rewind
June 25, 2008:
A people's cinema rough cut heart so squarely in the right place over in Passaic as opposed to Hollywood, that it's pretty much hard to resist. 
More...
June 16, 2008:
RT on DVD: 70 More Minutes of The Incredible Hulk on Blu-Ray??
This week in DVD news, that long-awaited Kill Bill double-volume set may finally be on its way and Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier promises enough leftover Hulk... More...
March 05, 2008:
UK Box Office Breakdown: Slow Week Sees Bank Job Claim No.1
A slow week at the box office allowed Jason Statham's The Bank Job to sneak into first place in the UK charts. Meanwhile Rambo, Cloverfield and Alvin and the Chipmunks all... More...
February 29, 2008:
UPDATED: UK Box Office Breakdown: Odeon Snubs Rambo
Jumper holds on to the number one spot at the UK box office, but only because a dispute between Sony and Odeon kept the film of the cinema chain's 100+ screens. More...
What’s Hot On RT
Other News
Fresh Links
Featured
Animated Oscar?
Hollywood.com ponders whether or not an animated film could win Best Picture.
Wes Anderson on Fox
The director talks about puppetry perfection and his film, Fantastic Mr. Fox
Dressing Wonderland
Tim Burton's costume designer talks to Movieline about her long collaboration with the filmmaker and Johnny Depp.
Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Twitter
Get all the latest movie updates, reviews, interviews and features here.
Competitions
Win 9 tickets
20 double passes to win to the new animated film, produced by Tim Burton.
Win Wild Things Tickets
Free double passes to join Spike Jonze's wild rumpus.
IGN RSS Feeds