Be Kind, Rewind

Jack Black and Mos Def team with director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Science of Sleep) to give us this oddball comedy about a man who becomes magnetized and erases the entire inventory of videotapes in his pal’s rental store. (The movie takes place in the ’80s.) They end up having to “swede” all the movies. What’s sweding, you ask? “Remaking something from scratch, using whatever you can get your hands on,” explains Black. Natch. So the boys take whatever junk they can find, grab a video recorder, and remake everything from RoboCop (with Black in tinfoil) to The Lion King to 2001: A Space Odyseey to Boyz n the Hood. Black even asserts: “Our version is better!” Undoubtedly.