---
title: "Be Kind Rewind"
year: 2008
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/be-kind-rewind"
fi1m_id: "be-kind-rewind"
imdb_id: "tt0799934"
tmdb_id: 4953
wikidata_id: "Q320236"
fi1m_score: 65
critics_score: 66
critics_reviews: 18
published: "2026-09-21T20:56:04.821114+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-21T20:56:14.672604+00:00"
region: "PT"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Be Kind Rewind (2008)

Directed by Michel Gondry · 1h 42m · Drama, Comedy

## Identity

Be Kind Rewind

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/be-kind-rewind
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** be-kind-rewind
- **IMDb ID:** tt0799934
- **TMDB ID:** 4953
- **Wikidata ID:** Q320236
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0799934/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/4953, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q320236

**Fi1m score: 65** · Critics 66 from 18 reviews

*In a sentence:* Jack Black gets magnetised, wipes every tape in Passaic, and it is somehow the most plausible thing in the plot

> Michel Gondry’s comedy is lovely whenever Jack Black and Yasiin Bey are remaking *Ghostbusters* out of tinfoil and cardboard, and dull whenever it has to move its plot along. The remakes are worth an evening; the story around them barely holds together.

## Synopsis

Passaic, New Jersey. Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) runs Be Kind Rewind, a VHS rental shop in a building he insists was the birthplace of Fats Waller, and the city has given him weeks to bring it up to code or lose it. He leaves the counter to Mike (Yasiin Bey) and sets off to study the DVD chains taking his customers. Jerry (Jack Black), who lives in a trailer beside the power plant, tries to sabotage it, comes home magnetised and wipes every tape. When Ms. Kimberley (Mia Farrow) asks for *Ghostbusters*, Mike and Jerry shoot their own version on a camcorder in an afternoon. A neighbour, Alma (Melonie Díaz), joins them, and the tapes go out as ‘sweded’ to explain the price and the wait.

## Review

Michel Gondry, writing and directing, sets a comedy in a failing VHS shop in Passaic, New Jersey, and asks what happens when the customers start making the films themselves. It is a small, scruffy idea and he films it as one, on real streets in winter with the tapes stacked to the ceiling. For perhaps forty of its 102 minutes, whenever Jack Black and Yasiin Bey are running about with a camcorder, it is among the happiest things Gondry has made. The other hour is the plot.

The remakes are the film. The first is *Ghostbusters*, shot in an afternoon with proton packs of tinfoil and cardboard and a logo painted by hand on the side of a car, and we laughed out loud at it, more than once. Then come *Rush Hour 2*, [*Robocop*](https://film.one/film/robocop), *Driving Miss Daisy*, [*2001: A Space Odyssey*](https://film.one/film/2001-a-space-odyssey) and a run of others, and the best stretch of the film is a montage that moves from one to the next as if in a single wandering take, a new cardboard set waiting every few steps. Dan Leigh’s production design does its real work here. Nothing on these sets looks bought, everything looks found, and if you squint it also looks like the film being copied.

Ellen Kuras shoots Passaic in flat grey daylight and the shop in the yellow of a bare bulb, and she lets the camcorder footage stay camcorder footage, smeary and overexposed, so the two kinds of picture sit side by side. Jeff Buchanan cuts the remakes fast and the connective scenes slowly, and the scenes about building codes did not need the time he gives them. Jean-Michel Bernard’s score is light, piano-led and content to stay out of the way. Rahel Afiley and Kishu Chand take the costume credit, and most of what they made is tinfoil.

Black plays Jerry at full manic stretch for the first twenty minutes, and it is tiring, and then something odd happens: he calms down the moment he is in costume. He is a better actor in tinfoil than in his own clothes. Bey is the quiet centre, a straight man who never plays the joke, and he carries most of the feeling the story has. Danny Glover gives Mr. Fletcher a slow courtesy that makes the shop worth saving. Mia Farrow, as Ms. Kimberley, is dotty and rather touching. Melonie Díaz’s Alma arrives late, turns out to be the only one of them who can act or direct, and takes over.

The trouble is everything between the remakes. Jerry is magnetised by a power plant and wipes the tapes; Fletcher leaves town to spy on a DVD chain; the city wants the building brought up to code. Gondry writes these scenes as if hoping we will not look at them too hard, and we did look, because there was nothing else on screen. There is a moment about who should play whom in *Driving Miss Daisy* that raises a real question about race and casting and drops it inside a minute. When the outside world finally notices what the shop is doing, the film deals with it in a scene or two and hurries back to the cardboard.

And yet the last ten minutes, which we will not describe, caught us out. We had spent an hour mildly amused and faintly impatient, and then the neighbourhood was together in the dark watching something it had made, and our throat tightened before we had agreed to it. Gondry earns the moment by doing what the whole film has been about: handing a camera to people who have never held one and letting what they make be rough.

Set against his own record it sits where you would expect. [*Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind*](https://film.one/film/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind) (2004) had Charlie Kaufman’s script to hold Gondry’s inventions in place; *The Science of Sleep* (2006) did not, and drifted. This drifts too. It is also warmer than either, and it is the one you could show a ten-year-old.

Watch it at home, with someone who owns a camera, and accept that the middle hour is a wait. You will be making something before the credits are done, which may be the point and is at least a result.

*Fi1m score 65, published 21 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics like Be Kind Rewind, and they like it for the same thing: the homemade remakes at its centre. The sequences in which two friends re-shoot erased films on the cheap are called inventive, witty and touching almost across the board, and several reviews treat them as the point of the whole film. Gondry’s visual ingenuity gets the credit, along with Jack Black’s energy, and many read the film as a warm argument for community and do-it-yourself filmmaking against Hollywood polish.

The reservations cluster on everything around those sequences. The plot is called perfunctory and loose, the sentiment laid on thick, and several critics say the film never delivers on its own premise. The spread is wide: Time Out gives full marks, while The New Yorker and The Independent find the charm undisciplined and the neighbourhood’s acclaim for the remakes hard to believe. The Guardian, otherwise amused, is troubled by how the remakes handle race.

## Straight answers

**Is Be Kind Rewind worth watching?**

*Be Kind Rewind* is worth watching for the forty minutes in which Jack Black and Yasiin Bey remake *Ghostbusters* and a dozen other films out of tinfoil and cardboard, and we scored it 65. The plot around those remakes, about building codes and a magnetised man, is dull and barely holds together. Come for the cardboard, put up with the rest, and the last ten minutes may catch you out.

**How long is Be Kind Rewind, and what is it rated?**

*Be Kind Rewind* runs 1h 42m. It is a drama and comedy film.

**Where can I watch Be Kind Rewind in Portugal?**

*Be Kind Rewind* is not on any streaming or rental service in Portugal at the moment. It is available in 4 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

### Reviews we read (18)

- **Time Out**, David Jenkins (5/5): The critic praises Gondry's playful and accessible follow-up as his most sparkling work yet, following two friends who remake erased VHS tapes in a rundown New Jersey store. Visual ingenuity and a heartfelt communal finale celebrating cinema's restorative power are singled out for praise. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/be-kind-rewind)
- **The AV Club**, Keith Phipps (B+): The review finds the film thoughtful and light-handed in exploring who controls popular culture, praising its visual wit, game performances and overflowing humanity. It notes that Gondry is not a skilled storyteller and the script frays into loose strands. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/be-kind-rewind-1798203807)
- **The Hollywood Reporter** (81/100, inferred): The critic calls the film an exuberant, fanciful fable about the interplay among films, their audience and their makers. It praises Jack Black's irrepressible energy as key to carrying the whimsical, cornball conceit of neighborhood "sweding" of popular movies. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/be-kind-rewind-125523/)
- **Screen Daily** (80/100, inferred): The review hails the jaunty, visually inventive fantasia as wondrous and dazzlingly executed, a celebration of art, personality and the communal power of movies through eccentric remakes. It notes the premise's rebuke to Hollywood homogeneity but finds it falls short of the emotional intensity of Gondry's Eternal Sunshine. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/be-kind-rewind/4036710.article)
- **The New York Times**, A. O. Scott (80/100, inferred): Scott praises the film's sweet, lackadaisical illumination of movie love and the pleasures of DIY creativity through amateur remakes. He highlights Gondry's skilled yet delightfully amateurish techniques and the easy, antic good humor that avoids intense conflict or feeling. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/arts/28iht-22rewi.10527398.html)
- **Financial Times** (75/100, inferred): The film is 100 minutes of sweet-natured idiocy that meshes Clerks-style slacker energy with a countdown of movie remakes, full of whimsical charm and inventive low-budget recreations that catch on locally. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/a5355526-dfd7-11dc-8073-0000779fd2ac)
- **The Times**, Edward Porter (75/100, inferred): The plot is perfunctory but the amateur-movie shoots are wonderful, mixing silliness, sweetness and wit, with great inventiveness from writer-director Michel Gondry. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/be-kind-rewind-the-sunday-times-review-q2qm7jqj78k)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the film funny and entertaining with some laughs and a subversive homemade aesthetic that narrows the gap between Hollywood producers and consumers, but notes baffling flaws especially around handling of racial themes in remakes like Driving Miss Daisy. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/feb/22/comedy)
- **Empire**, Kim Newman (60/100, inferred): The review notes enough whimsical humour to sustain the film but criticises its self-indulgent moments and uneven execution, while praising the standout parody sequences and underlying heart. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/kind-rewind-review/)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Carina Chocano (60/100, inferred): Chocano calls the movie sweet-natured and likable but says it never fully delivers on its ingenious premise of subversive remakes, stopping at goofy homage. She praises the delightfully inventive montage sequences and Gondry's nostalgic defense of the little guy and individual voice while noting it lacks the emotional pull of his prior films. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-feb-22-et-rewind22-story.html)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (40/100, inferred): Ebert finds the film whimsically amusing but not particularly funny or strongly recommendable, suggesting it is the kind of movie better suited to later DVD viewing. He notes the inventive but unskillful re-enactments of classics and Jack Black's manic energy while observing a lack of paroxysms of laughter or deep engagement. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/be-kind-rewind-2008)
- **The Independent** (30/100, inferred): The critic finds Michel Gondry’s whimsical comedy about two friends remaking erased videotapes overly sentimental and implausible, with its central conceit of neighbourhood acclaim for the ramshackle remakes failing to convince. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/be-kind-rewind-12a-785203.html)
- **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (30/100, inferred): Lane argues that the charming conceit of the film proves charm is not enough, resulting in a silly and undisciplined work where Gondry rejects common sense. He singles out the missed opportunity to craft a professional fable about amateurs and the lack of direction for the cast. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/02/25/beamed-down)
- **Digital Spy**, Alex Fletcher (80/100, inferred): The critic praises Gondry's quirky comedy for its inventive humor and community themes. Jack Black and Mos Def deliver standout performances in the remakes. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a89631/be-kind-rewind/)
- **Eye for Film**, Anton Bitel (3.5/5): The critic praises Gondry's quirky, lo-fi take on community values and DIY filmmaking that pits local inventiveness against globalised culture. The film is celebrated for its heart, humour, and nostalgic charm despite flirting with cliché. [Read](http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/be-kind-rewind-film-review-by-anton-bitel)
- **Paste**, Robert Davis (65/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a thin, slow comedy that stumbles into a touching ode to community and do-it-yourself filmmaking despite its ridiculous premise and lack of visual flair. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/michel-gondry/be-kind-rewind)
- **The Playlist**, Rodrigo Perez (65/100, inferred): The review calls the film incredibly silly and flawed yet a charming paean to the DIY spirit, community, and love of movies. It notes that Gondry's imagination sometimes veers into nonsensical territory but ultimately delivers an endearing, heartfelt underdog story. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/be-kind-rewind-incredibly-silly-heavily-20080221/)
- **Den of Geek**, Simon Brew (2/5): The critic finds the film squanders a promising premise about remaking erased videos. The 'sweding' scenes start strong but give way to a clumsy plot. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/be-kind-rewind-blu-ray-review/)

## Details

- **Director:** Michel Gondry
- **Director:** Michel Gondry
- **Screenplay:** Michel Gondry
- **Cinematography:** Ellen Kuras
- **Editor:** Jeff Buchanan
- **Music:** Jean-Michel Bernard
- **Production design:** Dan Leigh
- **Costume design:** Rahel Afiley, Kishu Chand
- **Producer:** Georges Bermann, Julie Fong, Michel Gondry
- **Cast:** Jack Black as Jerry; Yasiin Bey as Mike; Danny Glover as Mr. Fletcher; Mia Farrow as Ms. Kimberley; Melonie Díaz as Alma; Irv Gooch as Wilson; Chandler Parker as Craig; Arjay Smith as Manny
- **Runtime:** 1h 42m
- **First release (the US):** 20 January 2008
- **Genres:** Drama, Comedy
- **Budget:** $20 million
- **Box office:** $31 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dko0wesoCRc

## Where to watch in Portugal

Not streaming, renting or buying in Portugal at the last check.

Also available in: CA, ES, IT, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Son of Rambow* (2007): Two English schoolboys remake Rambo with a camcorder; the same joy, better plotted
- *American Movie* (1999): A Wisconsin man makes his horror film on nothing; the documentary version of this dream
- *Cinema Paradiso* (1988), Fi1m 84: A Sicilian village and its picture house; where the communal ending here comes from — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/cinema-paradiso.md)
- *Smoke* (1995): A Brooklyn tobacconist’s as the neighbourhood’s living room, with Harvey Keitel behind the counter
- *The Science of Sleep* (2006): Gondry’s previous film: the same cardboard inventions, sadder and stranger and less tidy

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/be-kind-rewind