Mike (Def) works in his adoptive father Elroy's (Glover) video store. The store isn't faring so well as DVD hocking outlets are taking its business away. Elroy heads off on a fact-finding mission to try and turn his business around and leaves Mike in charge of the store while he is gone. Unfortunately, Mike's best friend Jerry (Black) has become magnetised whilst attacking the local power substation as part of a hair-brained scheme and erases all the tapes in the store when he comes to visit. With a hazy memory of every movie in the store, and with the aid of the only girl in town who will help them (Melonie Diaz), the pair attempt to film their own version of any movie that a customer asks for in 24 hours. The results are hilarious. Robocop, Driving Miss Daisy, King Kong, Men in Black all get a 5-minute serve.

Be Kind Rewind pretty much succeeds purely on the hilarity and chemistry of its leads. Jack Black is as manic as ever, Mos Def reigns in a solid straight-man act and Melonie Diaz provides great female support to both acts. This offbeat collage has something that will appeal to everyone.

A wealthy heiress, Ellie (Colbert), rebels by running away from home after her father attempts to stop her marriage to an aviator. She is helped along by a reporter, Peter (Gable), who has just been fired. Ellie hopes to be reunited with her fianc((eacute)), while Peter hopes to sell the story to his former boss and thus regain his job. Together they travel across country by bus, and, through a series of hapless adventures and comic misunderstandings, they gradually grow to like each other more than they had intended. As a romantic comedy the film has not aged much in the past 74 years, despite all the references to the Great Depression, and there is undeniable chemistry between its two stars who were in peak form. There is the famous scene where Colbert, while hitchhiking, stops a car by flashing her leg. The film skirted the censorship of the Production Code era with its "Walls of Jericho" reference. This classic comedy, directed by Frank Capra, was the first film to win all five major Oscars: best film, director, screenwriter, actor and actress.

(This print provided courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive)