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French celluloid sorcerer Michel Gondry delivers his most playful, accessible and sparkling slice of whimsy yet in the follow-up to 2005’s The Science of Sleep. This time, Gondry takes us on the Capra-esque journey of highlystrung VHS rental shop clerk Mike (Mos Def) and his skittish, mildly unhinged mechanic buddy Jerry (Jack Black) as they are forced – via myriad helter-skelter plot machinations – to remake all the films in the store, which have been inadvertently erased. They manage to perform a roaring trade by converting the present-day dead-end town of Passaic, New Jersey into a teeming, ramshackle film lot, where customised (or ‘Sweded’) versions of ’80s popcorn classics such as Ghostbusters and Driving Miss Daisy are rolled out at a dizzying rate.

On paper it sounds eccentric, but this is all part of Gondry’s vision. He presents us with a film whose simple structure could have tripped from the tongue of any vacuous pony-tailed studio exec, but he uses this premise to flip open the ribcage of cinema and allow us to peruse its blood, bones and sinew to see how they flow, flex and fit into a glorious whole.

The magnitude of Gondry’s visual ingenuity is consistently jaw-dropping: with the aid of some washing machine innards and a white jump suit he manages to reduce the iconic rotating space station scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey to a kind of cinematic primordial ooze, at once presenting the infinite potential of the camera to create, subvert and renew reality while also screaming, “Yes, you can do this too!”

This is a film in thrall to the fact that we have camera phones, YouTube and iMovie at our fingertips, and that there are people who go out there and make movies, just for the hell of it. But the joyful process of filmmaking is not its sole concern: there’s also a fondness for archaic technology (you could even read it as a clarion call to a generation weened on in-built obsolescence) to the point that CGI is rejected in favour of in-camera effects that lend the film a ragged visual energy comparable to the ’80s classics to which it pays homage.

In the end, though, it’s this total respect for its ironic source material that has enabled Gondry to achieve his greatest coup. In a postmodern rendering of the archetypal ’80s schmaltz finale, the director picks at our heartstrings like a cigar-box banjo, bringing the entire town together to watch Mike and Jerry’s fictitious biopic of local jazz legend Fats Waller in what must be one of the most nakedly romantic salutes to the restorative power of cinema since the kisses montage from Cinema Paradiso. It’s an awesomely simple, powerful moment, echoed by an earlier declamation from Mia Farrow’s doddery Mrs Falewicz as she enjoys one of Mike and Jerry’s remakes: “A toast to movies with heart and soul!” Hear hear!

David Jenkins

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