A Wild Trip that Never Idles

An anachronistic exercise in visual kinetics, director Bryan Barber's Idlewild is a cinematic mash up of classic Hollywood, 30s Harlem, prohibition-era cool and 21^st century hip hop - try saying that three times fast.

Large Lad and Andre 1930

One night at Church upsets the status quo when singer Angel Davenport (Paula Patton in a breakout performance) enters Percival's life, and Trumpy (Oscar nominee Terrence Howard) enters Rooster's. Soon Percival is dreaming of leaving Idlewild to seriously pursue a musical career and Rooster is trying to decide if being a big shot in a small southern town is worth sacrificing both his life and his family.

Referencing everything and everyone from Cab Calloway's hip style to the Nicholas Brothers acrobatic dancing to Josephine Baker's extravagant musical numbers, Barber's debut feature is overflowing with references and nods to the 1930s. And thanks to Hinton Battle's choreography, Shawn Barton's costuming and Charles Breen's production design, Barber pulls it off handily.

Shot on a $15 million budget, Idlewild is an ambitious film that puts every dollar on the screen. There are singing cuckoo clocks, lavish dresses that seem tailored made for Patton's sensuously lithe frame, a talking rooster flask, musical notes that comically come to life and energetic dance sequences that put most modern music videos to shame.

This is Outkast we're talking about, so there are a few moments that will have some folks temporarily scratching their heads. But anybody expecting another sub-standard Donald Goines blaxplotation rip-off featuring sub-par acting and badly lit sets obviously has never listened to an Outkast album or watched an Outkast video. Always going for broke, Outkast never does anything in halves and Idlewild is no different.

Bryan Barber and Outkast have created an instant cult classic; a hip hop fairytale for the grown and sexy.

Charles Judson is a local screen & comic book writer and a regular contributor and film critic for CinemATL.