Ahoy, squirts! Quint here.

This was probably the biggest movie playing the fest. It’s a studio film, but it’s by an arts-friendly director and not exactly the most mainstream thing on the planet.

I actually get a little tired of people talking about how Sundance has sold out and it should only have black and white movies shot on hi-8 and Lithuanian documentaries. I go to a lot of film festivals and Sundance is one of the most dependably programmed festivals I’ve ever done.

Film festivals are about drowning yourself in movies, celebrating film as an art form. Sure, it’s about discovering new talent, too, and Sundance has plenty of those films. I’ve seen and loved a few first or second time filmmaker movies so far, but it really is all about programming good or at the very least interesting things.

BE KIND REWIND to me fits with the fest and was a nice pick to be a big premiere.

It was certainly a hot ticket. There were over 100 wait-list people there 4 hours before the show and I was there an hour early and still about 500 people back in the line.

I was warned in advance by another contributor to this very site that saw BE KIND REWIND and hated it with a passion. I’m sure he’ll his own review soon, but I think that warning lowered my expectations a bit.

BE KIND REWIND isn’t a great movie. It’s a good movie. I was going to say that it was a good movie, but my least favorite Michel Gondry movie until Rav reminded me that Gondry directed HUMAN NATURE. I really don’t like that movie. So, it’s my second least favorite Gondry movie.

Jack Black and Mos Def both work really well together and are funny in the movie, but when they’re not remaking films the movie slows down to a snail’s crawl. I especially didn’t like the sub-plot of Glover (who plays the owner of Be Kind Rewind, the video store where Def works) exploring the giant chain competition stores. It just slowed the movie down and didn’t really add anything to the story.

One other unfortunate thing about the flick is that about 85% of the actual remaking sequences are in the trailer. They’re still funny and we get a little more than what we’ve seen, but I honestly would have been happy to have the majority of the movie being Mos, Melanie Diaz, Jack and the gang “swedeing” movies.

The movie is flawed, but still fun and geeky cool at times. I think you spend the most time watching their first movie, GHOSTBUSTERS and that is great stuff. I definitely wanted more of the nitty-gritty of them figuring out how to remake certain scenes.

Alright, enough on this studio dreck! I’m going to review some indies now! Keep an eye out for them… I’ll be writing in-between my movies for today…. Full schedule. Be back soon.

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com