A couple weeks ago I finally had the opportunity to watch Idlewild. Being a fairly avid Outkast fan, I had been pretty hopeful that I would enjoy this film despit the tepid reviews. Turns out the reviews were right on, and I was more disappointed than I could have imagined since I had built a “yeah, but” wall around my expectations.
Idlewild begins at a pretty frenetic pace, and the ingenuity of mixing such disparate musical genres had me pretty well sold. And then the movie just deflated for about 90 minutes. It may be more correct to say the movie deflated in about 5 minutes, and then sat in its deflated state for 85 minutes before picking up again over the last 10 minutes.
The problem, as I see it, was that there was not enough music. I expected a musical, but there were long periods of relatively silent and contemplative murk. During the music-free portions of the movie there was not the expected exposition of a musical, but rather periods of pacing typical to a traditional movie. These stretches were not only jarring, but also boring. Suspension of disbelief is difficult but possible in a musical, but when a plot that is severely lacking (i.e. the plot of most musicals) is thrown under the traditional movie lights it dies a pretty inglorious death.
Even the musical elements ultimately disappointed me. A significant amount of music used in the film was from Outkast’s previous albums. Not such a bad thing except that two of my favorite Outkast songs, Morris Brown and Call The Law, which happen to be on the movie soundtrack album, did not make it into the flow of the movie.
The moments of genius in Idlewild remind me of what this project could have been. I only wish Outkast et al had pulled it off so the audience could have enjoyed one of the greatest movie musicals of all time. Rather than that, we received one of the bigger musical duds. Still, I thank Outkast for trying.
