The whimsy gets sticky in "Be Kind Rewind," writer-director Michel Gondry's latest. But it'd be wrong to dismiss the film outright. Gondry's misses are more interesting than most filmmakers' successes.

Previously, among others, Gondry made the fascinating "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (scripted by Charlie Kaufman, from a story co-written by Gondry), in which Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet paid to have their relationship memories scrubbed clean out of their brains. This time the erasing is purely unintentional. "Be Kind Rewind" unrolls in an alternate-universe version of the present day, though its VHS-only vibe is pure 1990. Jack Black plays Jerry, a Passaic, N.J., motormouth who becomes magnetized and accidentally erases each and every video in the shop managed by his pal, Mike, played by Mos Def.

With the store owner (Danny Glover) away, the customers come to Mike complaining of blank tapes. What to do? Simple: The guys decide to remake everything from "Rush Hour 2" to "Ghostbusters" to "Driving Miss Daisy" (Mia Farrow portrays the world's most ardent "Driving Miss Daisy" fan) in 20-minute versions. They call the process "sweding" (pronounced "sweeding") a movie. With the help of Alma (Melonie Diaz), who works at the nearby dry cleaners, Mike and Jerry transform themselves into the Passaic New Wave. The neighborhood loves the results, and Gondry pits these good innocent folks against the forces of evil, embodied by anti-piracy lawyers and developers determined to knock down the old video store.

"Be Kind Rewind" may exist in a hazy, dreamy time warp, but its artistic impulses are strictly YouTube. (Gondry has served as the Google subsidiary's guest curator.) Unauthorized remakes are the order of our day; the originals, Gondry might argue, exist only to be messed with. Hacking around with a camera and your imagination will save your sanity, even if it can't save your store, his film says. Gondry is an earnest man, and he has made a sincere, and sincerely dorky, picture.

It's amusing to watch Jerry and Mike film their no-budget mashup versions of "Robocop" and "2001," and by the end, depicting the neighborhood premiere of a fake documentary of the life of Fats Waller, you may well give in to the whole silly thing. (We're back to the cardboard cars and visual fancy of Gondry's "Science of Sleep.") If only the comedy informing the whimsy were fresher. Black and Def can't make much of their bickering characters, and Black in particular comes off not as a lovable loser or a wistful dreamer, but simply a pill.

The film doesn't hold together. But it's the work of a real director, however fantastic his sensibility.