Funny premise, unfunny film

Filmmaker Michel Gondry builds his movies out of clutter - dream fragments, old jazz, balls of yarn and the like - but somehow, they don't feel messy. In his sublime breakthrough feature, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," and its endearingly light-headed follow-up, "The Science of Sleep," the director rearranges the landfill of his imagination to create vivid, spellbinding mosaics.

The illusion fails to materialize in "Be Kind Rewind." With Mos Def, Jack Black and a big bucket of movie-love in tow, Gondry sets out to enshrine the do-it-yourself aesthetic. Instead, he gets lost in a whorl of self-indulgence and delivers a mush-mouthed comic fantasy that feels like
it was shot in one take.

More the shame, because the premise is a hoot. Rapper-actor Def plays Mike, a video clerk in Passaic, N.J. Genial kid that he is, Mike is only too happy to manage the near-bankrupt store - which caters to the poor and carries only VHS tapes - while the elderly owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny
Glover), is out of town.

Mike swears nothing will go wrong, but, naturally, everything does when oafish, trouble-making pal Jerry (Black) magnetizes himself while staging a one-man assault on the local power-plant and unwittingly erases every tape in the store. Now Mike and Jerry have to cover their gaffe by shooting no-budget video remakes of "Ghostbusters," "Rush Hour 2" and "RoboCop" before a doddering old-lady customer (Mia Farrow) blows the whistle.

Black and Def running around impersonating the likes of Bill Murray and Jackie Chan might have been reason enough to endorse "Be Kind Rewind" if the creative mayhem in question wasn't so undependably funny. Sure, it's all really cute - a junky fridge becomes the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey," a few lines of makeup turn Black into the world's most unconvincing Jessica Tandy in "Driving Miss Daisy" - but there's surprisingly little comic current.

Maybe it's Def (too mumbly, old for the part). Maybe it's Black (always with the manic-loser routine). Maybe it's Gondry's non-savvy screenplay. For all their cinematic aping, the characters don't have much to say about movies.

Gondry wraps it all up with a sentimental, self-congratulatory bow that the movie never really earns. The director imagines himself to be making a "Cinema Paradiso"-style salute to make-believe. Or is it a mockery?

Be Kind Rewind
Stars: Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow
Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Michel Gondry
Rated:PG-13 for sexual references
Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Grade: C-