It sounded crazy enough to work: a new movie musical (crazy already) set in the 1930s but featuring the unabashedly hip-hoppish music of OutKast.
Well, it doesn’t work, but “Idlewild” is a respectable failure. The sheer novelty of the attempt is worth something, and a lot of the music is really fun.
Not only does OutKast provide the original music, the two wizards who make up the Grammy-winning outfit are cast in the leading roles. For their billing, they’ve dropped their musical monikers, Andre 3000 and Big Boi, and opted for the most distinguished Andre Benjamin and Antwan A. Patton, respectively.
The two play childhood friends who grow in opposite directions. Percival (Benjamin) is a sensitive piano player who works in his father’s mortuary by day but pounds the keyboards at a nightclub after dark.
Said nightclub is managed by Rooster (Patton), who juggles family, girlfriends and threats from organized crime with equal aplomb. Oh, and he also gets up on stage and raps – although the rapping has a distinctly 1930s quality.
Oddly, the two men share few scenes together. Rooster takes over the club after the owner (Faizon Love) is gunned down by an ambitious young gangster (Terrence Howard, from “Hustle &Flow”). Percival is tending to an anxious new singer (Paula Patton, no relation) and quietly nursing his musical ambitions.
It takes a considerable leap of faith to roll with the hip-hop verse and the big band horn arrangements, but why not? The movie is creating its own imaginative world, not a documentary.
Writer-director Bryan Barber has worked on music videos with OutKast (and Christina Aguilera and many others), and he’s clearly stoked when he’s directing the music in this movie. The stage numbers are a kick, and even better are a few moments when people break into song while going about their daily business – in one case, while escaping from a hail of bullets in a car chase.
For the opening half-hour or so, “Idlewild” bounces along on nerve and punchy orchestrations. After that, it becomes clear that certain generic scenes, such as Percival arguing with his mournful father (Ben Vereen) or Rooster encountering a mysterious traveler (acting icon Cicely Tyson), are simply that: generic. Without the wacky pumped-up production numbers, they wouldn’t stand on their own.
As for the OutKast guys: Benjamin has had more acting experience (“Be Cool,” “Four Brothers”), but Patton comes across better in the flashier role. Neither makes this movie more than a worthy experiment that stalls out before the finish.
Andre Benjamin is one of the stars of “Idlewild.”
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