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Maybe it was because "Boyz N The Hood" was both parodied and celebrated so earnestly, that by the time Jack Black appeared in black face during "Be Kind Rewind's" third act, I had forgiven Director Michel Gondry's film for all of its missed opportunities and flaws, and embraced it for what it was basking in: the power of the movies.

Gondry has an eye that still puzzles me but also continues to draw my curiosity.  In his music videos for Daft Punk, The White Stripes, and Foo Fighters, he somehow manages to articulate the exuberant visuals he conjures up into a way that makes them both original but devastatingly familiar.  Who hasn't had a dream where their hands didn't get huge?

Easier said than done of course.  Gondry's zest for creating worlds from common everyday objects is a treasure to behold in today's age of CGI overkill, where lifeless renditions of places like say, middle earth, create more noise than inspiration on the silver screen.  Sometimes he doesn't quite hit a homerun ("The Science of Sleep") but he swings for the fence each time.  Sometimes we're lucky enough to have an "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" hurled our way.

So now there's "Be Kind": a whimsical film that pits its pair of heroes in a situation that inspires them to recreate ("swede" as the film calls it) their favorite videos (mostly B-movies) in order to keep business alive at their shabby video store.  Through some quickly forgettable setup scenes involving Jack Black getting zapped Looney Tunes style, we are to believe that Black is magnetized and thus has the power to erase all the VHS tapes he walks by. Fine. The real fun begins when Black and friend Mos Def (who, by the way, is pretty incoherent in some of his dialogue) actually start to reenact some of their fav flicks by way of recording them with a VHS camera recorder.  A lot of it is funny and inventive and you almost wish there was an added segment at the end, where we get to see one of these twenty-minute long recreated treasures in its entirety.

Up until about the last five minutes, I was pretty sold and accepting of the fact that Gondry had managed to divert my attention for about two hours with his film.  Then during the closing scene of the film, when the camera is pretty much focused in on the eyes and faces of eager viewers watching their neighborhood-created "sweded" docudrama, I was struck with the image of myself and the other members of the audience in the auditorium watching "Be Kind."  All of us, looking ahead at an illuminated screen, mouths open, eyes wide open as well; as if some of us were looking for a kind of divine truth in our moviegoing passage and others looking only for an early evening distraction. 

The idea intrigued me and by the time the possible real point of the film--how each of us creates our own version of what we see, especially in movies--started to sink in, the closing credits were rolling. 

I suddenly want to see the film again.  Maybe I'll wait for it on DVD, though.

Or maybe even on VHS.

Then again, if it is released on VHS (rare these days), part of me hopes that when I put the tape in the VCR, I am met only with static.

Perhaps that will prompt me to make it my own.