Idlewild
Ambition and laziness, virtuosity and incompetence: All collide in “Idlewild,” a period musical starring André Benjamin and Antwan Patton, a.k.a. André 3000 and Big Boi of OutKast. Perhaps I shouldn’t even call it a period musical, given its blasé anachronisms and the disconnect between the songs and the story. Templates exist for what “Idlewild” is trying to do: “Moulin Rouge,” which used modern music to capture the exuberant spirit, if not the specific sound, of a long-dead time and place, and “Singin’ in the Rain,” arguably the best movie musical ever made, which wove an original story around existing songs. Still, you might feel cheated to hear Patton and Benjamin performing cuts from their masterful 2003 double album, “Speakerboxx/The Love Below,” while nominally playing a speakeasy manager and his piano player in Prohibition-era Georgia. Especially given that the movie presents Benjamin’s character as a crackerjack songwriter just waiting to bust loose. If he’s so good, how about letting us hear a couple more of his songs?
Writer-director Bryan Barber is an accomplished director of music videos, including the exuberant clip for OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” But I can recall only one MTV director making a more awkward transition into narrative filmmaking, and that’s Tarsem Singh, director of “The Cell.” Barber’s dialogue is a parade of clunky clichés, and despite his bursts of visual energy, the story moves at a glacial pace. He can’t dramatize conflict or build tension. “Idlewild” needs more wild and less idle.
LISTEN: Idlewild