Be Kind Rewind

Jerry: "I will shoot you and I know robot karate."

Be Kind Rewind is a film starring Jack Black and Mos Def. Mos Def's character, Mike, helps run a video store that stubbornly offers VHS tape rentals regardless of the rise of DVDs. Mike's peculiar friend Jerry (Jack Black) tries to sabotage a power station and nearly electrocutes himself, becoming magnetized in the process. He then walks into the video store, erasing all of the VHS tapes. Angry customers begin to come in complaining, and Mike is at a loss as to how to replace the store's stock on a limited budget. The store has already received threats of foreclosure, which the owner has tried to prevent by getting the building registered as a historical landmark as the birthplace of jazz singer Fats Waller.

The idea soon occurs that Mike and Jerry will reshoot the films themselves, using whatever they have available. They start with ambitious projects such as Ghostbusters and RoboCop, creating a crazy home video feel they call being "sweded". The store gathers popularity around the neighborhood, so much so that the FBI anti-piracy warning at the start of the tapes becomes a reality.

The trailers looked promising, but the film received average reviews, probably because it wasn't quite what people were expecting. There isn't as much focus on the sweded videos as the trailers make out to be, but it's still definitely worth watching.

Tropes used in Be Kind Rewind include:

• Actor Allusion: Jack Black starred in the 2005 King Kong... and he's playing the titular character in the sweded 1933 film. Sigourney Weaver plays the attorney who protests about copyright issues and she also starred in Ghostbusters.
• Bittersweet Ending: In the final scene of the film, Jerry, Mike, and Mr Fletcher convince the neighborhood to help produce a tribute film to Fats Waller's Life. After the film airs to a small minority, the trio exits the store moments later to the sound of applause, and discover that most of the townsfolk were in the street watching the film through an outside projector. Everyone cheers for them, including the demolition team and the police (who were meant to tear down the establishment for legal reasons).
• Broken Aesop: If what really happened doesn't suit you, write your own history.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Jerry is magnetized, one of the films glitched by him moving around is the film itself, as the picture glitches every time he passes too close to the actual location of the camera.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Jerry
• Generic Graffiti: Averted. Mike and Jerry are working on a mural of Fats Waller in the beginning of the film.
• Lightning Can Do Anything
• Never Trust a Trailer: First, watch the trailer. Then watch the movie and realize that the trailer cut out an ENTIRE MAJOR SUBPLOT.
• One-Scene Wonder: Sigourney Weaver as the copywright lawyer.
• Reality Ensues: Shockingly. The actually points out that piracy is illegal and the place gets shut down. Ouch. Then again . . . piracy being stopped . . . maybe Author Appeal?
• Real Men Wear Pink: When a group of hoodlums request a few "Sweded" films and The Lion King pops up, everyone immediately stares down the Scary Black Man.
  • It was Alma.
• Shout-Out: Tons upon tons.
  • Ok, you've got the two leads sweding up famous films, including Ghostbusters, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Driving Miss Daisy, The Lion King, King Kong, Men in Black, RoboCop, and Boyz N the Hood.
• So Bad It's Good: the sweeded films are this in-universe.
• Stylistic Suck: The Sweded movies, duh.
  • They even sweded one of the trailers!
    • Sometimes the Sweded films cross into Narm Charm territory due to the hilarious and clever ways in which they're recreated.
• Wraparound Background: Used to film the sweded Men in Black tunnel scene.