Thursday, February 28, 2008

Be Kind, Rewind

Be Kind, Rewind. I wanted to see this movie when I first heard about it. Jack Black? hilarious. Mos Def? Underrated as an actor. I love his music, and I've never seen him in a movie I didn't like. One thing I don't understand tho. Mos Def is an amazing rapper, great singer, eloquent and mesmerizing. But when he acts, he kind of mumbles a lot, and speaks like a small child. The first time I thought it was a shtick for the part, an affect for that specific movie. Then I saw it again. Then in interviews, public appearances. It's how he talks! That confuses me.

So the movie. Mos Def works for Danny Glover at a video shop in a small town in NJ. His wacky friend who works across the street is none other than Jack Black. This is kind of a tired premise, but I was ok with it. Anything where Jack Black gets to unleash his craziness is worth watching for me.

The film was funny, very funny at times. It was also cheesy, very cheesy at times. I was honestly a little touched, but it kind of angered Margo. She HATED the movie. So I'm going to include her review here too, in the spirit of bi-partisan ism and for your reading enjoyment.

PS. Is it possible Mia Farrow is actually 100 years old?
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Last night I took Christopher out on a date night and he picked the movie. Be Kind Rewind. A movie I had seen a preview for and immediately forgot, while Christopher was counting down the days until its release…

My reaction is a strong one to this movie, be forewarned: do not waste your precious $9.75! You may need that money to buy the next Mariah Carey album at Target.

The 2 weaknesses of Be Kind that I want to focus on were the subject choice of mental illness and the casting of big names to play “common” people. The movie had Christopher at Mos’ Def in an aluminum foil suit with his friend, Jack Black, a paranoid outcast. I am a tough sell on caricatures of people with mental illness partly because I work in mental health and partly because I think that you should really be prepared to say something a little deeper about this disease than “look at him he’s wearing a colander on his head because he thinks it keeps out the microwaves!” You might be chuckling now at the image, but generally people that believe stuff like that as truly as you and I believe that the sky is blue, aren’t going to be able to own a business, maintain friends, and function day to day like Jack Black does. Just try this for a second: would the audience be laughing at a movie that parodied people with Multiple Sclerosis or cancer?

Alright, I’ll get off of my soap box on parodies of mentally ill people. Now for the casting: Mos Def was great but the other actors in the movie, Mia Farrow, Danny Glover, Jack Black, and Sigourney Weaver were too big for the film. They distracted from the plot because they stood out so much from the rest of the cast. I liked that the smallest roles, such as “angry customer” felt like they were done by people pulled from the street. However, despite Mos Def and the extras, it took about 3 minutes of the over-acting of Black and Glover playing Murtaugh AGAIN (alas, no Riggs!) for me to want to snuggle up to Christopher’s shoulder.

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Well done Mugs, I know we're all looking forward to the next point/counterpoint review :)

PS- I didn't think Jack Black was supposed to be mentally challenged, and milady obviously loves Lethal Weapon a bit too much.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mentally ILL my sweet, not mentally CHALLENGED. Also, FYI nobody says "challenged" anymore.