IDLEWILD
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As Heard in the Film review by Clark Douglas: In recent years, the musical seems to be making something of a comeback, albeit often in rather unconventional forms, ala "Moulin Rouge". The latest "concept musical" is the Outkast feature "Idlewild", which is one of the most inexplicably off-kilter viewing experiences I've had this year. The movie is as fascinating as it is frustrating, featuring scenes ranging in quality from remarkable to embarrassing. "Idlewild" is the pet project of musicians Andre Benjamin and Antwan A. Patton (aka Andre 3000 and Big Boi, better known as Outkast when they're together). While their passion for "Idlewild" is certainly evident, their individual approaches to the material simply don't mesh well.
The story is set during the prohibition era, and revolves around a local speakeasy in Idlewild, Georgia, ironically called "Church". As Benjamin notes in his opening narration, "it's anything but that." "Church" is, essentially, the centre of bad behaviour in Idlewild, with drinking, dancing, and stripping being at the top of the agenda. The joint is run by Ace (Faizon Love) and Spats (Ving Rhames), who are criminals, but good-natured and friendly. Their hottest performer is the flashy "Rooster" (Patton), who has a tendency to get into trouble and a habit of cheating on his wife as often as possible. Rooster's boyhood friend, Percival (Benjamin), also performs at the club at times, playing backup on the piano, but he's a much more quiet, gentle, easy-going sort of fellow. Percival works full-time as a mortician with his father (Ben Vereen), which makes him a rather solemn fellow (though his father doesn't think he's quite solemn enough). So there's your basic character setup... at this point, the movie dives off into two drastically different directions.
Rooster quickly finds himself in a tough jam, and his side of the story progresses as a sleazy, violent, and quite predictable crime drama, with Terence Howard hamming it up as a vicious thug. On the flip side, Percival falls in love with a lovely young singer (Paula Patton), and their scenes together are sweet and heartfelt. The tone of the movie flips so drastically that it gets hard to adjust after a while. The film is usually at it's best when Benjamin is at the centre... on the basis of his performance here, he's as capable an actor as he is a musician. His scenes with Paula Patton are wonderful, as are his occasional flights into whimsical fantasy. One of my favourite scenes has him crooning a tune while his large collection of cuckoo clocks sing backup vocals. Every time Percival looks at his musical notes, they turn into little stick figures and start prancing around. Patton is okay in his role (he was better in this year's "ATL"), but his character is a bit hard to like at times, and his storyline is as ridiculous as it is typical. Most of all, many of the scenes involving Patton are simply too grimy to fit in the same movie with Benjamin's more innocent sequences. On top of all this, you've got a few scenes that don't seem to fit on either side, particularly one with Cicely Tyson that feels straight out of a Hallmark movie.
The music is obviously the main attraction of the movie, at least for Outkast fans, so how is it? A mixed bag, to say the least... this is yet another area where Benjamin seems to outshine Patton. The songs Benjamin performs range from decent to excellent. He effectively manages to blend his own modern style with the swinging styles of the period, particularly in his final two numbers, in which he's allowed to unleash his inner Al Jolson. Very entertaining stuff. Patton's raps, however, are pretty underwhelming, with one exception... there's a dazzling sequence which manages to include a rap between Patton and his talking flask, a car chase/gunfight and some amazing visuals. Paula Patton and Macy Gray each get one number, and they both do a respectable job. Contributing the score is the always-reliable John Debney, whose function here, as in so many films he works on, is to fill in the leftover spots not covered by songs. With all the "big scenes" featuring songs (both onscreen and off), Debney is left with the less important romantic scenes, dramatic scenes, and dialogue scenes, all of which he scores with the appropriate pre-ordained emotions... tinkling pianos for romance, sad strings for tragedy, a bit of period jazz for lighter moments, and so on. It's all perfectly solid stuff, but there's no moments that really stand out as anything above-average.
Watching "Idlewild", I was reminded of several different musicals... "Moulin Rouge", "Xanadu", and others... but the one that kept coming to mind again and again was "Pennies From Heaven", the off-kilter Steve Martin musical set in the same era as "Idlewild". Much like "Idlewild", "Pennies From Heaven" featured scenes of romance and whimsy contrasted alongside scenes of brutality, masochism, and depression. In that film, it worked, in an unnerving sort of way, as a means of making a dramatic point about the way the music of the era was used to try and coat over the everyday awfulness that surrounded the struggling working class. Here, in a film meant purely as entertainment, it's uncomfortably inappropriate and detrimental. Had the film taken one direction or the other, it would've worked... the direction of Benjamin's scenes would've been preferable, but it would've worked either way. As it is, the movie is a mesmerizing failure. I suspect it will pick up a cult following once it hits dvd, as most movies this odd and offbeat tend to. While it flat-out misses the big picture, it has a lot of remarkable little moments, almost enough to merit a recommendation. But not quite. Director Howard Hawks famously stated the criteria for a truly good movie as being a film with "three great scenes, and no bad scenes". "Idlewild" only gets the first part right.
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Running Time: ## minutes ## seconds
Varèse Sarabande VSD-6751 (2006)
Music composed and conducted by John Debney. Orchestrations by Brad Dechter and Kevin Kaska. Featured musical soloists Arturo Sandoval, Mike Lang and Brian Pezzone. Recorded and mixed by Robert Fernandez. Edited by Jim Jarrison and Jeff Carson. Album produced by John Debney.
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