Idlewild (2006)
Review by Zachary K. Parker
“I still get overwhelmed/when I look in your eyes.”
Many instances of Outkast’s new film - and accompanying album/soundtrack - overwhelm the viewer with its flamboyant imagination. Writer/director Bryan Barber, who directed many of Outkast’s music videos, flaunts talking roosters, living-shouting-shooting-gambling musical notes, and a wall covered with a cussing, chorus of cuckoo clocks.
Idlewild’s musical numbers absorb all of the viewer’s attention, especially when combined with the film’s amusing car chase.
However, aside from its dances and
music, Idlewild underwhelms with its muddled, lackluster story. Unlike Moulin
Rouge! and
For example, the story’s setting in a 1930s speakeasy allows a distinctive atmosphere, but it adds little to the story. Of course, the story also experiences a personality disorder – two, separate (disconnected) stories supplying a loose narrative skeleton (a dressed and buried excuse), in (on) which Outkast gussy up with period clothing, rap, and boogie.
“I’m only satisfied/when I look in your eyes.”
The primary character story focuses on Percival, who works with his father, Percy Sr., in an Idlewild funeral home. Percival hides in idleness, secretly yearning for satisfaction apart from dressing corpses.
When popular singer Angel Davenport arrives at the club, Percival finds in her his muse (and love), albeit with an unpopular past.
Meanwhile, the second character, Rooster, muses on how to get booze past Trumpy, the new Idlewild gang boss.
His wild life is only complicated by how he: 1) witnessed Trumpy murder the first boss, Spats; 2) though just a club attraction, inherited the actual club – its debts too – when Trumpy murdered its original owner, Ace; and 3) will not remain faithful to his wife and several children.
Percival and Rooster faithfully acknowledge God (“God don’t make no mistakes”), and become grateful for His divine intervention. They meet death, itself gussied up as funeral homes, booze, bullets, and the like, and are rescued with various divine representations.
Thus God (or the rooster) provide the backdrop for some of the more outlandish events. It’s Percival and Rooster who are the players here - not just performers but men centered on their own control over life.
If we add these separate figures, the result equals only a fraction of Idlewild’s worth. The film delivers the narratives of its characters unsatisfactorily in proportion to its spirit. Both men meet their lack of decisiveness, action, and sacrifice.
However, these weaknesses and their resolutions lack the confidence the filmmakers put into the dance choreography, or the finesse implemented in the film’s cinematography.
“I’m simply astounded/when I look in your eyes.”
Idlewild begins to astound the imagination, but avoids using its own with some astounding (ly bad) consequences. God don’t make no mistakes, but Outkast and Barber could have avoided a few in Idlewild. Still, Outkast fans and anyone interested in watching a series of music videos will not make a mistake by entering Idlewild.