Rating: 
Director: Bryan Barber
Starring: André Benjamin, Big Boi (as Antwan A. Patton), Terrence Howard, Faizon Love, Cicely Tyson, Macy Gray, Ben Vereen, Patti LaBelle, Ving Rhames
Idlewild didn’t suck, but it was a disappointment. “I’m going to see the new Outkast musical” earned me some skeptical looks the afternoon before the screening. My reply was, “Hey, if it turns out the story and acting suck, it’s still a musical by Outkast — fusing hip-hop with ’30s jazz. So the music and the production numbers will make it worthwhile.”
I was wrong. The lackluster story and acting were all right, but not enough to keep the screening audience — imported by the local urban/hip-hop radio station — interested. And the musical aspect was a crushing disappointment. Who would’ve thought Outkast would fail to deliver enough music in their cinema debut? Worse, the first real production number — and three songs total, by my count — were lifted off their previous album, the enormous smash (from 2003!) “Speakerboxx/The Love Below.”
The production numbers were barely worthy of the name, and looked low-budget and half-assed. The plot was predictable and morose. Much as in their musical output, Outkast duo Andre 3000 and Big Boi (credited for the film by their real names, Andre Benjamin and Antwan Patton) pursue largely separate plot lines, and nothing in the film ever catches on fire or generates much enthusiasm, on screen or in the audience.
Most frustrating, paradoxically, are the brief flashes of brilliance: a catchy new song, relative newcomer Paula Patton as Benjamin’s love interest, and particularly flashes of directorial life — animated musical notes that dance off the page, a talking hip flask, flashy, stylistic camera work — that serve to remind the viewer of how much better a movie this should have been.
The new album, released in conjunction with the film, is pretty decent, though.
August 25th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
Disappointing.
I went and saw “Invincible” tonight, and other than the fact that everyone has seen this movie a hundred times already, it was pretty good.
Formulaic, but a nice crowd pleaser that has it’s heart in the right place.
August 28th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
This movie would have been a lot better had it been MORE like Moulin Rouge and actually incorporated say…Motown music into the 1930’s style. I just don’t think it ever got it’s footing. It was too dramatic to be taken seriously as a musical (as well as morose) And too much of a musical to be taken seriously as a drama. The flask was funny at times, but became very annoying. I also didn’t like how in the early production numbers it was hard to hear the rapping/singing. The album is decent.
I liked Andre Benjamin in his role in “Be Cool” and he was even okay in “The Four Brothers” but this time around it was just a lot of stylized visual effects that go nowhere.
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:01 pm
[...] He hooks up with Val Kilmer, who probably did not gain all that weight for this role, whose some kind of FBI cop with a crazy gizmo that can look exactly four and a half days into the past, and lets them see anywhere, including through walls — giving them a chance to figure out who the bomber was by watching the crime unfold. Only, Washington has figured out that the murder of a beautiful young woman in the hours before the blast must be tied in to the big case, so they spend most of their time watching Paula Patton (the most likable part of “Idlewild”) walk around her apartment in her lingerie. [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 1:18 am