Be Kind Rewind (12A)

Put it on fast forward

Director and music-video maker Michel Gondry walks a wobbly tightrope between madcap wit and maddening whimsicality. His screwball romance on the mysteries of consciousness, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, was kept steady by the screenwriting talent of Charlie Kaufman, whose form on the subject was already proven with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Without Kaufman, Gondry took a tumble with the dismal daydream fable The Science of Sleep and now Be Kind Rewind goes the same way. It's a goofball comedy whose occasional bolts of inspiration tend to evaporate under its overwhelming need to be loved.

The story is set in the somnolent backwater of Passaic, New Jersey, where kindly old Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover) runs a neighbourhood video store, Be Kind Rewind. His building, which he claims to be the birthplace of jazz legend Fats Waller, is about to be repossessed by developers, so he goes off to raise funds, leaving Mike (Mos Def) to mind the shop. "Keep Jerry out," is his single parting request, Jerry (Jack Black) being Mike's nutty pal who believes that the local power plant is messing with his head. One night Jerry is caught in an electrical storm and ends up magnetised, walks into the video shop and accidentally erases all the tapes.

Let's leave aside the problem of a video rental store even existing today. A dotty patron of the shop (Mia Farrow, in Mrs Tiggywinkle mode) comes in asking for Ghostbusters, prompting Mike and Jerry to snap into action and do their own cheapo remake of it – the old dear will never know the difference.

Their idea catches on, and soon they're not just running the store but remaking all the movies they fancy, Driving Miss Daisy and RoboCop to start, and then, more ambitiously, 2001 and King Kong. Gondry wants it both ways here, sending up the democratisation of moviemaking – the YouTube philosophy that says that anyone can do it – and pointing up the absurdity of Hollywood's big-budget extravagance when all that's required is a streak of invention and a video-camera. So which is to be?

The film serves up its little skits with some verve, and you may chuckle at the pair's crummy reimagining of old favourites with nothing but cardboard, tape, a wing and a prayer. Yet these shenanigans cannot sustain the central conceit, which is that their makeshift movies become extraordinarily popular with the local residents. There is no plausible evidence that this could be true. While the fate of a run-down video store might touch the hearts of a community, once it goes we know they'll all be off to Blockbusters round the corner – and who can blame them? Mike and Jerry's quasi-movies may have a ramshackle charm, but they also look terrible, and the idea that their pièce de résistance would stop neighbourhood traffic and cause waves of applause is one that even Capra would have baulked at. Be Kind by all means, but don't Be Stupid.

Watch the 'Be Kind, Rewind' trailer