Two tales of the tape

THROUGHOUT Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind," I couldn't decide if I was watching a cleverly timely and zeitgeist-y riff on the make-your-own-media era or a weirdly anachronistic throwback to a time that's not coming back. It's a tossup. Sweet-natured and likable as the movie is, it never really delivers on the promise of its ingenious premise, which hints at a subversive retelling of mainstream Hollywood movies but stops short at goofy homage.

Gondry, champion of all that is lo-fi, DIY and crafty, and fearless defender of the mechanical over the digital, has made a movie about a couple of guys who accidentally demagnetize an entire video store's inventory and decide to restore the videos by shooting lo-fi, DIY and crafty versions of their own. Video store, you say? That's right. VHS tapes? Yes. And the story's not set in the past, either, despite its characters' seemingly quenchless thirst for the blockbusters of the 1980s.

This technical anachronism is addressed by setting up the Passaic, N.J., store's owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), as an old-fashioned guy who refuses to kowtow to the so-called demands of the market, and who couldn't afford to even if he wanted to. The building that houses his store is condemned, despite his dubious claim that it also happens to be the birthplace of jazz legend Fats Waller.

A loopy and likable Mos Def plays Mike, Mr. Fletcher's unofficially adopted son and sole employee. Jack Black is Mike's cranky friend Jerry, who lives and works at a nearby junkyard and is convinced that the neighboring power plant's "microwaves" are affecting his brain. Disaster strikes when Mr. Fletcher leaves town for a few days, putting Mike in charge of the store. Jerry suffers an electrical mishap that leads to the erasing of the inventory, and they come up with the plan to remake "Ghostbusters" to throw off Mr. Fletcher's old friend Mrs. Falewicz (Mia Farrow), who is starting to become suspicious.

Old Mrs. Falewicz may be too fuzzy to tell the difference between the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and a little pile of flambeed S'mores, but her nephew and his friends aren't. Soon, the neighborhood is clamoring for Mike and Jerry's "Sweded" remakes. (The two pretend the movies are being ordered from Sweden to justify the delay and expense of renting them.) They recruit a pretty local girl named Alma (Melonie Diaz) from the dry cleaner to be their costar and crew, and when they reach their production capacity, they invite people from the neighborhood to help produce and star in their favorites.