Various Artists

• Share
  • Email
  • Del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google
  • Yahoo
  • Facebook
• Print
• Write to the editor
• Feeds
  • PopMatters
  • Listen

Amazon

Be Kind Rewind is a delightful, sprawling, overly ambitious movie whose only major grievance is its descent into overt sentimentality near its end. Yet for a film that tries re-creating roughly a dozen cinematic classics from scratch—as well as the life of jazz legend Fats Waller, who was born in the Be Kind Rewind video store long ago (at least in director Michel Gondry’s mind)—the soundtrack, thankfully, is just as creative.  A majority of the songs, somewhat inexplicably, sound like Quincy Jones’ funk-lite workouts that he so often tinkered with in the late 70s. The breezy feel-good nature of these tracks suit the movie well, but composer Jean-Michel Bernard (who scored Gondry’s previous flick, 2006’s Science of Sleep) tends to have the most fun when he’s doing genre parodies: from alternate Rush Hour 2 themes ("Chinese Bamboo") to stereotypical action orchestrations ("Little Mikey"), it’s just outright fun, especially when contrasted to Bernard’s remarkably-faithful 20s-styled piano jazz vamps. Mos Def winds up covering three Waller classics ("Your Feets Too Big”, “I Ain’t Got Nobody”, and “Ain’t Misbehavin’"), and though his delivery is a bit more casual than Wallers’, the songs work almost solely on Def’s own feel-good vibes, sounding like he’s smiling throughout every note. Toss on a track from Booker T. & the MGs ("Sunny Monday") and Billy Preston (the sensational “Nothing From Nothing"), and you got yourself the kind of soundtrack that’s worth rewinding time and time again.

RATING: