All who were dazzled by the torn-paper-and-string aesthetic of 2006’s The Science of Sleep will be amused by the homespun, homemade, and very low-tech short films anchoring Michel Gondry’s new feature, Be Kind Rewind.

The characters work together to produce small-scale VHS remakes of hits, like Ghostbusters, after the originals are destroyed during a seemingly interminable set piece, in which Jack Black becomes magnetized in a power-plant mishap. The video store is also located in a deteriorating building condemned by the city, and the replacement films become the store’s only hope for survival. It becomes clear that Gondry loses control of his film at the expense of an aesthetic device—the staticky whimsy overwhelms characters and the plot simply cannot hold the audience’s interest.

Although a terrific visual stylist, Gondry is not much of a screenwriter. I was not bothered by the concept of a video store in the year 2008 dealing exclusively in VHS—it’s kind of a cute notion. But switching gears to a story about gentrification, Gondry seems uncomfortable with economic realities, constructing a simplistic us-versus-them story that sits uncomfortably amidst all the kitschy trappings. And his protagonists, while played gamely enough by Black and Mos Def (speaking in a garbled New Jersey accent, sounding like a French Tony Soprano), are never as interesting as the films they’re shooting.

Still, their little movies are a lot of fun. The biggest laughs in the film come from their rendition of Ghostbusters, shot at the town public library, and their version of Rush Hour, shot on a playground. Black and Def, who are left hanging by Gondry’s direction for the first 30 minutes of the film, come alive when shooting their tapes. But without a framing device that makes sense, the shorts seem implausible and silly, rather than funny.

If the short films were made by the typical Gondry characters—quietly tormented, creative souls played by Gael Garcia Bernal—the moviemaking process might be fraught with interesting tensions and creative struggles. As it is, Black and Def are just making wacky movies for money. A single virtuosic shot shows the video clerks’ series of increasingly entertaining and ambitious shorts (When We Were Kings and 2001: A Space Odyssey among them), but the viewer is somehow left less than entertained.

One might as well watch decontextualized videos on YouTube for the lack of identification one feels with Gondry’s sketched-out characters. The mini-epics are certainly the best part of the film, and they appear to be the portion into which Gondry put the most effort. That effort seems misguided, though, if the shorts bear no weight. One character in the film proclaims that people who make their own films are “stockholders in their own entertainment.” The audience, however, is not, and for all Gondry tries to draw us in, those proffering entertainment are opaque from beginning to end. These characters exist in an inaccessible reality, neither recognizable nor entertainingly askew.

The central premise of Be Kind Rewind is, on its face, a good one. The notion of remaking films oneself is a powerful one. Take as an example the three Mississippi preteens who made a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark in the 1980s—clips from their film still circulate on YouTube. Everyone wants to feel a part of the filmmaking experience, but the viewer watching Be Kind Rewind is likely to find the movie’s short films ultimately less an entry point than an alienation effect.