BE KIND REWIND
An inventive neighborhood comedy best for teens and adults.
Should You Watch It?
Be Kind Rewind is a goofy, sometimes endearing comedy with hilarious and even heartwarming moments. Its greatest pleasure comes from watching two young men use homemade costumes, sets, and special effects to remake major Hollywood movies for their neighborhood.
The film is not as raunchy as other PG-13 comedies, but it still includes foul language, two light sexual references, one somewhat vulgar scene about being with women, and euphemistic language. The characters also lie and deceive to keep their project going.
You can enjoy its homemade creativity and warmth if you are choosing for teenagers and adults. For pre-teens, parents should weigh the content carefully; the practical answer is to see it with teens and adults, not younger children.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESJerry is a paranoid young man living in a rundown New Jersey neighborhood. After he accidentally erases every videotape in the video store where his friend Mike works, the two make a homemade version of Ghostbusters to satisfy a customer.
The neighborhood loves their goofy remake and begins demanding more. Soon, Jerry and Mike are recreating major Hollywood, classic, and avant-garde movies with whatever costumes, sets, and special effects they can make themselves.
Is It Any Good?
Three stars means a funny, appealing comedy with noticeable unevenness. The homemade movie sequences are often funnier and flow better than the film’s other scenes.
The creative costumes, sets, and special effects used to recreate Men in Black, Driving Miss Daisy, and RoboCop provide some of the film’s funniest bits. The neighborhood’s enthusiastic response creates charming, heartwarming, and whimsical moments. It is not a big-budget Hollywood comedy, but its inventive spirit and endearing humor give it real appeal.
The Worldview
The film presents a light mixed worldview with some immoral pagan elements, some morally uplifting moments, and light positive Christian references. A Christian pastor is a minor character, and references are made to a historical figure’s Christian clergy father. At the same time, the movie has no particularly strong moral or theological premise.
The story values creativity, friendship, and the way shared movies bring a rundown neighborhood together. It also includes lying and deceit, while people use movie fantasy to escape the hard facts of their city. The film’s warmth is genuine, but its moral vision remains light rather than deeply grounded.
The movie’s picture of neighbors finding joy together can point toward the biblical call to mutual care: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Content Summary
Light mixed worldview with some immoral pagan elements, some endearing morally uplifting elements and light positive Christian references (such as a Christian pastor is a minor character and references are made to a historical figure’s Christian clergy father), but with no particularly strong moral or theological premise, plus man mentions the word “homosexual” when he fears getting too close to a homeless man that he and his friend have dressed up to play the femme fatal in RUSH HOUR 2, so they decide to use a real woman instead; 13 obscenities (including a few “s” and “h” words), one strong profanity, two light exclamatory profanities, implied vomiting twice, man says “What the duck” a few times, and it is implied that magnetized man is urinating in the streets and movie cuts to a metallic yellowish liquid flowing down the gutter with a few metal parts from cars and a metal spoon going with it; light comic violence with no blood such as firecrackers attached to homemade toy weapons pretend to shoot people in homemade movies, people pretend to be shot dead, comic falling, man gets electrocuted and this causes him to be magnetized, pretend fighting; no depicted sex but three men talk briefly about the idea of being with women and a vulgar term is used for male anatomy, man says a joke about another man “flying solo” (or some phrase like that) to imply auto-eroticism, and lightly implied pretend sex when couple acting in a homemade movie are under a blanket making the blanket move around quickly and when woman in a car in a long-distance shot lifts up her legs, but nothing graphic shown; no nudity; no alcohol; no smoking; and, miscellaneous immoral elements such as lying, deceit, an excuse is made for lying about the past, two young men make low budget special effects of ghosts for their homemade remake of GHOSTBUSTERS, and people use movie fantasy to escape from the hard facts of their rundown city.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
Jerry and Mike use creativity to bring their neighborhood together. How can your gifts serve the people around you?
1 Peter 4:10 · Galatians 6:2The characters use lying and deceit to keep their project going. When, if ever, do we try to excuse dishonesty?
Ephesians 4:25 · Proverbs 12:22The neighborhood enjoys escaping into homemade movies. What can entertainment give us, and what hard realities must we still face faithfully?
Philippians 4:8 · James 1:22The film includes a Christian pastor as a minor character and references Christian clergy. How should Christians think about the ways faith appears in popular stories?
Colossians 3:17 · 1 Thessalonians 5:21The Final Word
Be Kind Rewind offers homemade creativity, goofy humor, and genuine neighborhood warmth. Its foul language, vulgarity, sexual references, and dishonesty make it a poor choice for younger viewers. For teenagers and adults, it is WORTH THE TRIP — AGES 13 AND UP.
