Be Kind Rewind
Yesterday turned out to be Movie Monday. I was feeling so bad after sleeping for 12 hours (totally not the result I was aiming for) and had to puke twice. So I lay on the couch for the most part of the day and zoned out in front of the TV. The Bachelor was up first and, I must say, no matter how many times I see the film – I will tune in and love it all over again. After crushing on Chris O’Donnell and Renee Zellwegger, the dashing genius Jack Black was up with Be Kind Rewind. 🙂 If you plan on seeing the movie and you’re not interested in a spoiler, stop reading and grab a copy of the film already!
Set in Passaic, New Jersey, the story revolves around the VHS rental shop Be Kind Rewind owned by Danny Glover’s character Mr. Fletcher. The shop, along with the building where it’s situated at, is at a declining state. In fact, town officials have given Mr. Fletcher a demolition date and he can stop it only when he is able to make the necessary improvements before the set deadline.
Helping Mr. Fletcher at the shop is a young man called Mike. The shop is entrusted to him when Mr. Fletcher decides to go on a trip to scout the competition that has DVD rentals. Of course, he doesn’t tell Mike that’s where he’s going. As far as everyone else knows, Mr. F was off on a memorial for Jazz legend Fats Waller who was supposedly born in Mr. F’s building. Jerry (played by Jack Black) is high on conspiracy theories, and he believes that The Power Plant is messing with everyone’s brains. On the first night that Mr. F is away, Jerry convinces Mike to go with him to sabotage the Power Plant. While crossing over the fence, Mike realizes what Mr. Fletcher’s parting message was at the train stop: Keep Jerry Out. He decides to abandon the sabotage and leave Jerry to his crazy schemes. But an accident happens, and Jerry is electrocuted.
The next day, Jerry comes in to the shop in a daze and a bad temper. He kept on re-arranging the videos on the shelves and annoyed the sole customer in the shop that day. Mike manages to throw him out, but little did any of them know that the damage has been done. As a result of the accident, Jerry has become magnetized and all the videos have been erased.
In his fear of disappointing Mr. Fletcher, Mike was forced to come up with a way to rent out the Ghostbusters to Mia Farrow’s character in the movie. He dragged Jerry to make what they later called a Sweded version of the movie, armed with one camera and lots of imagination. The version gains popularity, and soon, customers were paying huge money to request sweded versions of their favorite films. The business was doing great, until there was hope that Mr. Fletcher may finally afford to pay for renovations. But the government came and destroyed all of the sweded movies for copyright infringement. All of the store’s assetts were seized too.
Everyone thought that was the end of Be Kind Rewind, and Mr. Fletcher’s building. Mike speaks up and says they could apply to declare the building a historical landmark being Waller’s birthplace. But that prompts Mr. F to admit that the story wasn’t true – that it was just a bedtime story he shared with Mike, and couldn’t retract.
The people of Passaic didn’t give up though, they were determined to fight it out. They decided that they needed to make an all original movie, and who else would it be about? Their hero, Fats Waller.