seppukudkurosawa wrote:What came as a huge surprise to me was the fact that Fats Waller, who is hands down my favourite Jazz singer, didn't just loom large over this film, he should've been given third billing alongside Jack Black and Mos Def!
His very presence alone helped this movie make sense to me. Fats' songs had slow beginnings, but always had enough charm and vim to keep you engaged throughout. The exact same could be said of this movie. At first things were played pretty broad, but somewhere around the first couple of Swedes, I realised I was enjoying myself far too much to try and pick apart the slipshod nature of the whole endeavour.
Fats often wrote love songs, but it's his execution which made them stand apart from all his syrupy contemporaries. In a similar way, Be Kind Rewind follows the "underdog against the evil capitalists" template, but it shakes things up enough to make you buy it this time. First off, the evil capitalists aren't so much evil as just misguided. And secondly, nothing is concluded at the end. The movie ends on the grainy, black and white Fats Waller doc the community shot together, while "Your Feets Too Big" plays over the credits. If shooting a Fats Waller doc to unite a community is playing it safe, then there are far more people into him than I realised.
There were quite a few teens and kids in the theatre who were probably lured in by Jack Black: the first four words spoken in the European trailer are, "Jack Black...JACK BLACK!" after all. Though I'm not too sure most of them had any idea what was going on, the infectious feeling of people coming together to create something must have rubbed off on them, as most of them left the theatre smiling.
I can't recommend this to everyone, but I really enjoyed it all the same. Not Gondry's best so far, but definitely Jack Black's (JACK BLACK) best.
King Psyz wrote:SPOILER ALERT! In response to Stereos
Anyways, I thought the same at first about the saving the failing landmark ect.
But then there was a switch, You had Danny Glover scoping out the west coast video store, so you know he had all but given up on his vision.
What we really saw was a man defeated, a man who knew when he had been licked and just threw up his hands and went with it.
I still wasn't sure til right on the end when the building wasn't saved, but instead Danny Glover's character said I gave up, I sold out, but at least me and Mike will have something to get us started in the projects.
So while we ended on a up, it was not by any means a Hollywood perfect happy ending. The man and the kid he's looked after were moving to the projects.
LaDracul wrote:Well, maybe the older kids, considering how he gets the magnetism out of his system... o_o
Pacino86845 wrote:And Mia Farrow is absolutely delightful in her supporting role here: the loveable spaced-out woman, I smiled every time she showed up on screen.
papalazeru wrote:The relationship between Black and Mos was good but felt slightly forced and the film tried to make quirky characters that didn't feel quite quirky enough, like they were trying to set a French film in the US.
magicmonkey wrote:Its weird, I really felt this when I put the movie on to watch the first 20mins... Then I went back to it later in the day, rewatching from the start and I found none of that "frenchness" at all, instead, I got a movie that felt like a product of 80's US comedy. I loved the movie, but did feel like it lost itself in the sweding. It was fun, then they seemed to just mash it all up and that really took away from the fun for me as a "Bowfinger" fan. The ending was sweet (and yeah, a tad European maybe) and all, but it kinda just got too edited down for me.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests