Idlewild: Critic Reviews

Idlewild is a romp, a ticket to rowdy good times.

The joint doesn't jump in the OutKast musical Idlewild; it just twitches and stumbles.

By jumbling genres, fashions, music and locales, and riddling bullets through much of it, Idlewild ends up feeling disjointed and disquieting.

For all its shortcomings, Idlewild also has something that few films can pull off: Moments of such pure cinematic fabulousness, breathtaking dance sequences and idiosyncratic flourishes that we are more than willing to forgive it for all its sins.

A sludgy, badly photographed, poorly edited bungle whose musical numbers never pop.

Idlewild has a sober, loving respect for history and the old South, and thereby grants itself a measure of distinction.

The first film from OutKast iconoclasts Andre Benjamin (Andre 3000) and Antwan A. Patton (Big Boi) has all the wit and creativity of their music videos. And here's the bad news: That makes it at least an hour too long.

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

OutKast's much-ballyhooed Prohibition-era musical is a dense, confusing jumble of old-school and new-school, gangster and gangsta, that never pauses long enough to tell a cogent story.

Despite some visual sparkle and musical razzle-dazzle, Idlewild is a messy movie.

Welcome to Church, the speakeasy in the often vivacious, sometimes silly, musical Idlewild.

In the end, the saddest thing about Idlewild is that all of the pieces were present for a very good film.

Idlewild is an engaging, original movie musical. It turns all sorts of pop cultural icons on their heads and delivers a smart commentary on race and class in 20th Century America.

Director 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.

[The Outkast duo] are, as might be expected, terrific in the musical numbers and painfully self-conscious in the dramatic sequences.

As unlikely as it seems that the music segments would be the weakest parts of Idlewild, however, it's just as surprising that the rest of the movie stands up pretty well.

A movie so oblivious to convention and structure that it seems like a Jackson Pollock splatter-painting, without the crucial 'genius' part.

[Idlewild] achieves 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.

It'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.

A misguided period-piece musical about gangsters, illegal 'hooch,' 'floozies' and music that is almost entirely unlike jazz.

A series of pretty-good pop videos wrapped around a confusing tale of Chitlin' Circuit striving and conniving.

Idlewild is so eccentric it remains compellingly watchable.

Between the gangsters and the showgirls, the gorgeous costumes and the wowser production numbers, Idlewild has just about everything a popular entertainment can offer. It also has a soul, and that comes free with the price of a ticket.

If, like me, you like OutKast just fine but staggered out of Moulin Rouge reeling from the quick-cut-induced nausea, you'll leave Idlewild tapping your toe and scratching your head at the same time.