I’m an artist, and if you give me a tuba, I’ll bring you something out of it.
- John Lennon

Eclectic and still armed with a childlike fascination, director Michel Gondry has again proven that he too has a wide array of tubas.

His new muse – homemade movies shot by video store clerks – reinforces the distinct allure of the flickering image, even though these clerks ain’t Tarantino.

Welcome to “Be Kind Rewind,” an old-school – better yet, prehistoric – rental store that seems to wobble rather than stand.

If you slammed the door, the whole place would collapse, says owner Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover). He stocks his store with a “collection,” if you can call it that, of VHS tapes.

But Fletcher’s reign is about to end as his building will be demolished for modern condominiums unless he can raise cash for renovations.

Time to catch onto the DVD revolution, right?

Not in Gondry’s world, where Jerry (Jack Black) and Mike (Mos Def) step in as perhaps the most inept Batman and Robin since Jay and Silent Bob.

First problem: Jerry concocts a sabotage mission to shut down the power plant he is convinced warps his mind. Of course, he gets zapped like a modern day Ben Franklin.

Second problem: Unaware of his newfound magnetized state, Jerry walks into Fletcher’s humble abode and erases every single tape.

Here, “Be Kind Rewind” is not only behind the technological gap but without the moneymaker.

At this point the rational ones might look to eBay, where they could buy enough VHS tapes to last until Armageddon.

But these two turn to the only possible way out – sweding. What is sweding, you ask?

According to the “Be Kind Rewind” Web site: remaking something from scratch using whatever you can get your hands on.

Jerry and Mike rock the goggles for the Swedish import of “Ghostbusters,” cross racial lines for their remake of “Rush Hour 2″ and throw gender issues out the window for their interpretation of “Driving Miss Daisy.”

Remarkably, the town of Passaic, N.J. catches on and joins in on Gondry’s tribute to the unifying power of film, including that at the most elementary level.

In the hands of almost any other director, it would be too goofy to strike emotional chords.

But Gondry maintains a Keaton-esque statue face the entire time, almost begging the audience to embrace his lovable losers.

Though neither as zany nor ambitious as his mindblowing “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Be Kind Rewind” is a nostalgic acceptance of filmmaking passion, even for those of us who will never reach Gondry-like proportions.