Be Kind Rewind
Dir: Michel Gondry, 2008, 101′
IMDB Plot Keywords: Underpass, Interracial Romance, Camcorder, Steamroller, Power Transformer
A freak accident in a power station has Jack Black accidentally erasing all the videos in Mos Def’s video store, leaving the two to re-create (’swede’) a bunch of movies. Let’s face it, the sweded movies were always going to be the real draw here, but I’d still like to think that it’s possible to present these in a believable way without such a ridiculously contrived setup. Still, despite the best efforts of Gondry’s clunky script, Mos Def’s attempt to mumble his way through an entire movie and Jack Black’s phoned-in performance, the movie manages to come together in the end in an unusually satisfying emotional way. I was expecting a lot worse.
The movie itself is nothing special, but it deserves accolades just for spawning this fantastic Terminator 2 swede…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mTCgIHpQXE
Absolutely - swedeing (sweding? what is the present participle of ‘to swede’?) is one of the greatest things Be Kind Rewind gave us. “Fix my hoover!” has become the de-facto joke for us whenever someone mentions Once.