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91Idlewild is a romp, a ticket to rowdy good times.
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90Idlewild has just about everything a popular entertainment can offer. It also has a soul, and that comes free with the price of a ticket.
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Aiding Barber is the terrific work of choreographer Hinton Battle, delivering a ferocious, contemporary update of swing and bridging the gap between quick-take MTV flash and the longer needs of cinematic dancing--a hybrid that works better here than in the frenetic, overrated "Chicago."
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75The result is a passionate, enthralling film that isn't afraid to take chances - even if it sometimes should be.
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70Idlewild has a sober, loving respect for history and the old South, and thereby grants itself a measure of distinction.
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70Achieves magic--something sorely missing from so many movies these days--and does so via a philosophy of respect, but not reverence, for what's come before it; it never recycles, it just reimagines.
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70For all its shortcomings, Idlewild also has something that few films can pull off: Moments of such pure cinematic fabulousness, breathtaking dance sequences and idiosyncratic 3-D animation flourishes that we are more than willing to forgive it for all its sins.
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70Director Bryan Barber (known for his music videos) and his cast display so much gusto that it's hard to keep up your resistance--I wound up finding this more enjoyable than the Oscar-bestrewn "Chicago."
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63A mess, but an energetic, convivial mess.
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63Idle it is not. Wild it is most assuredly. Set in Prohibition-era Georgia, Idlewild boasts yesterday's style, today's music, and the Harlem Renaissance's romanticism.
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63Barber's screenplay is mired in cliches that got old in 1935.
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63The music by Outkast is great, and the rowdy, randy en masse dance sequences are riveting. The story, however, is rather thin and lacks focus.
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63Despite the best efforts of Barber the director, he never quite overcomes the shortcomings of Barber the writer.
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63Artistic originality is not so common a commodity that you can afford to get too fussy about the details.
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60Anyone unfamiliar with or underwhelmed by the music of OutKast will find little in this thin piece of cinematic storytelling. Fans happy to luxuriate in its artistic indulgence, however, will be swept up in the weird, random, fantastic OutKastness of it all.
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Idlewild is diverting enough to suggest all the unexplored avenues in movie musicals.
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50An entertaining mess. It blends together musical styles and dances, historical periods with howling anachronisms, coy, almost childish gimmicks with R-rated sex and violence.
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50This oddball mix of "The Cotton Club" and "Six Feet Under" is a big, beautiful mess. But it offers the not-uninstructive spectacle of talented people stumbling over large and unwieldy ambitions.
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50The soundtrack is a genre-hopping joy, and each musical number is cleverly staged and creatively choreographed. The problem is the noble mess of a movie that takes up so much space in between.
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50It's basically a series of music videos - a few quite good - strung together over two long hours and loosely connected by a weak story line loaded with anachronisms.
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If Idlewild had something beyond OutKast's songwriting, it would make a swell musical.
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50The camerawork is steady, the editing patient, the choreography playful. It's a zippy and inspired piece of moviemaking. But there's one problem. It's playing under the closing credits.
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50The film only rarely harnesses the power of the anachronistic, funk-driven, beat-heavy rap music that swells its soundtrack. Even the intricately choreographed crowd dance scenes, filled with frenzied movement, are more often stillborn than stimulating.
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Patton and Benjamin can both hold the screen and are great in their musical sequences, but sorry, they aren't actors -- Terrence Howard, as the villain Trumpy, blows them into dust when he's on camera -- and their limited expressiveness detracts from the film's hallucinatory edge. The plot fails them too, as it takes turns we've seen in a dozen melodramas.
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50Idlewild has moments of sticky sentimentality and stretches of dull exposition, but you've got to give it this: It's unpredictable.
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50Idlewild boasts too much personality around the edges--especially in Terrence Howard and Macy Gray's scene-stealing turns--and not enough at its center. It's a vehicle for OutKast's music and personality in which the music and lead roles feel like afterthoughts.
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40The joint doesn't jump in the musical Idlewild; it just twitches and stumbles. As much a missed opportunity as a terrible tease.
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38A thin sprinkling of exuberance and a couple of choice cameos, that's about all this underwritten and overly choreographed spectacle has to tease us with.
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30There are moments in Idlewild that resonate with the painful "if only" of missed opportunity, and more than a few that just make you scratch your head. It's like some wildly overlong music video, minus the sexy thump 'n' grind. It's all blow, no pop.
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Shakespeare has been quoted many, many times over the past 400 or so years, but never to such empty purpose as in the inchoate, self-indulgent musical drama Idlewild, a star vehicle for the wildly popular hip-hop duo OutKast.
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25The most ridiculous period film since rappers took on the Old West in "Posse."
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 13
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Mixed: 1 out of 13
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Negative: 3 out of 13
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BooK.8Blows "Moulin Rouge" & "Chicago" away just in terms of sheer excitement. Beautifully filmed, obscenely talented and just plain *fun*.
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TreyB.9
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KenG7