The Be Kind Rewind trailer makes even less sense than it did before.
By Burbanked on Oct 10, 2007 in Movie Marketing 101, Movies, Trailers | 1,169 views |
I’m pretty desperate for offbeat, intriguing movies to work. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Game, The Truman Show - I love stuff that makes you work harder, think harder, contemplate what the artists are trying to tell you. And I think that it’s possible to make these kinds of movies - the anti-Transformers if you will - in any genre, with virtually any actors, as long as the writing is innovative and the director is up for the task.
But I just don’t get the concept of Be Kind Rewind, the upcoming film from writer/director Michael Gondry.
You probably already know that the movie is about a couple of guys who run a video store where all the tapes get erased, causing the pair to recreate famous movies by reshooting them themselves and passing them off as the real things. In order for this to make any sense at all, we have to be convinced that:
- It’s possible and feasible for a mom-and-pop video store - that apparently only rents VHS tapes - could somehow still exist, or
- DVDs were never invented, or
- The movie takes place in 1985 which it doesn’t because the pair are shown recreating Rush Hour 2 (2001), and
- That even a single one of their customers could possibly, believably and reasonably watch a 20-minute junior-high-school-level remake of Ghostbusters and react that it was “pretty good” and
- That we’re not completely bored with Jack Black playing that Jack Black character.
An early trailer for the movie was leaked several months ago after Comic-Con, and the official clip is available on the movie’s Web site (I saw it via Craig’s MovieBlog - and he’s a smart guy who also doesn’t know what to make of this). But the thing that amazes and infuriates me about this trailer can be seen in this screengrab:
Are you kidding me? Do the New Line movie marketers think that we’re so stupid that they’ve got to float a little VHS box of Boyz n the Hood over the scene where the character is recreating Boyz n the Hood? They do the same thing for Rush Hour 2 and 2001, even though the movie-clips-within-the-movie have obviously been chosen for the trailer to show exactly what films they’re from. Worse yet, this dopey tactic is inconsistent; scenes from Robocop, Ghostbusters and Driving Miss Daisy are painfully telegraphed in the trailer - by mentioning or showing the original titles - yet they don’t show the floating VHS boxes in these cases.
It’s awful, awful marketing. Dumbed down for morons and then dumbed down a bit further than that. I have some faith in Michael Gondry that maybe this could be just strange enough of a concept to work, but this terrible trailer isn’t doing him any favors.
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MC | Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
I feel good that I was drinking the haterade about this way back in May of 2006. http://rantocracy.blogspot.com/2006/05/be-kind-rewind.html
It looks and sounds like such a dumb movie even now.
DougJ | Oct 10, 2007 | Reply
It’s a cute idea for a movie but I can’t get past thinking how recreating the movies couldn’t be less expensive than just replacing the tapes. (not to mention all of the other stuff you mentioned)
Ray | Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
EXACTLY, Doug!! That’s just what I wrote in my promotion piece for this article!!
This was one of those pitches that sounded great and caused it to be greenlit before anybody in the room had a chance to actually THINK about it.
Burbanked | Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
Either that, Ray, or all of the approvers were lulled into a dopey sense of “wow this must be really cerebral filmmaking” by Gondry.
Now I will say that some of these contrivances could be overcome by good writing, but the foolishness just seems to stack up a bit high here.
Megan | Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
They very well might think we are that stupid. But more likely they were instructed to create a trailer that appeals to the Lowest Common Denominator. If you have any brains at all, marketing must be a bitch of a job.
Piper | Oct 15, 2007 | Reply
Alan,
Damn you’re good.
I hate. Hate. Hate this trailer. It makes no sense and I’ve felt that everyone has been praising it because it’s from Gondry. It feels like a bad venue for Jack Black to be “Jack Black” but unlike High Fidelity where Black was brilliant, he looks annoying here.
And yes, why the hell would anyone be okay with watching cheap remakes of movies.
Nah. I’ll pass on this piece of shit. But I might like the 20 minute version shot on video by a couple of video store geeks.
Burbanked | Oct 15, 2007 | Reply
A coworker of mine raised an interesting question about this silly, silly premise: while the pair is remaking the movies, doesn’t the de-magnetizing MacGuffin inside Black’s head simply erase the tapes again?
dougie p | Oct 15, 2007 | Reply
Hollywood is all out of stories. They remake everything. Only with Be Kind Rewind they remake EVERY FILM in a video store. They are shooting their wad in one film.
Note: You’ve got to pace yourself, Hollywood.
P.S. I can’t wait to see Sleuth with Michael Caine and Jude Law. It will be better than Sleuth with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Of course it will. Why? Because it’s new!
Burbanked | Oct 15, 2007 | Reply
“Hollywood” and “pace yourself” don’t really go together, dougie p. Witness the run-up to all the crap they’ll be making as the spectre of creative strikes looms.
And you’re right about Sleuth - when remakes start essentially just making the exact same film, with the exact same actors, doesn’t anyone in LA say “uh. wait a second…”?