This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm and is filed under B, Comedy, Movie Reviews, NEW IN THEATER. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Michael Gondry
Starring: Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Melonie Diaz,
Writer/ director Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is back with a so-so effort in this slow moving and one gag film. Jack Black is here, firing out all he can, but he runs out of zingers before Gondry runs out of film. The off-beat, story is far-fetched, even for a comedy, but did eventually draw me in a little, causing me to pull back, just a little, on the flame thrower that I was going to take to this one.
Mos Def is Mike, an earnest employee of a VHS tape only, rental store in a rundown building with a history, according to his boss, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover). Business is about as bad as you would expect in a 21st century video store with no DVDs, so Fletcher leaves Mike in charge, while he goes on a trip to think things over. Unfortunately for Mike, his anarchist friend, Jerry (Jack Black), has somehow managed to magnetize himself by wrapping himself in tin foil (don’t ask), and erases every tape in the store just by being there. Desperate to not look bad his first time in charge, Mike and Jerry start filming quickie versions of prominent older films that make The Blair Witch Project look like a Martin Scorsese masterpiece. Nevertheless, in the true Hollywood fashion, these catch on and the guys set out to make more “sweded” classics, but I got tired of these gags about the low rent copies of film classics before their seemingly desperately bored neighborhood did.
Love it or hate it, this one already has the markings of an offbeat cult favorite for Jack Black fans, amateur movie makers (or copiers) and those who really think that less is more. I can’t recommend it to you, but someone probably will.
