The Redheaded Kid brought us over Be Kind Rewind to watch last night and it’s an odd, sweet movie. It’s a bit like two movies conjoined at Mos Def. One is a Jack Black comedy, in which he plays a hyper weirdo who becomes magnetized and then makes goofy movies. The other is a sweet take on the old “Man trying to make his ‘father’ proud, not knowing that his father doesn’t quite deserve all that adulation, and what happens when he comes to know that” movie.
And, there are times when you feel like it might break apart at the seams because it feels too real. Some of the little kids… you don’t feel like they’re so much acting as just being caught on film being themselves. And when Mos Def’s character starts to smooching in on Melonie Diaz’s character, I–because I was looking away–noticed the Butcher and the Redheaded Kid were also looking away, because, I think, viscerally, it just felt like such a private moment (a very sweet moment, though, for sure) that you kind of did want to give them their space.
So, it’s weird. It kind of feels like a magical-realist documentary, if there were such a genre, which I now totally want there to be.
And the Butcher and the Redheaded kid were frustrated that there wasn’t any resolution, but I liked it because I thought it had a beautiful, sweet resolution.
So, there you go. I can see why it didn’t do better at the box office, but I loved it. I kind of felt like it was a movie made just for people like me, which probably severely limited their audience.
Still, you can watch it with your kids or you can watch it with your sweetie. I, myself, wish I could watch it with Mark and Danny and my brothers, because many of the movies they spoof are movies we spent–the five of us–watching when we were kids.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I remember seeing a preview of the film in a theater, but if I remember correctly, it seemed they were giving it an art house type promotion, kinda of like what they were doing for Juno until they realized they had a monster on their hands.
(It may have been at Juno that I saw the preview)
I’m guessing that they figured that Jack Black’s name alone could bring in the crowds, but by keeping marketing low key they could retain some sense of hipster cool to it.
I saw it in the theater and loved it for the same reasons…. it didn’t get the attention it deserved, probably because people expected Jack Black to be his usual twerp-character.