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DVD
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Idlewild
This atypical late summer fare did OK in theaters, garnering $12.5 million. But it should really take off on DVD, aided in no small part by the mega-momentum of Dreamgirls.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 10:10 AM
By Brett Buckalew
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Universal Pictures
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The tandem of Waddell, Thompson
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Some movies exist in a bubble of postmodern playfulness, so closed off from reality that they inspire either awestruck reverence or profound irritation within the viewer.
These films demand that you surrender to the pull of a world where distinctions between the old and the new, the everyday and the surreal, and the ugly and the beautiful mean absolutely nothing. And for those who can’t give in to such a heightened, anything-goes vibe, the experience of seeing these self-consciously trippy fantasias can become an almost physically nauseating ordeal.
A trustworthy litmus test for which side of the audience divide you’re on when it comes to these very 21st-century experiments in narrative and stylistic mixing and matching comes early on in the new quasi-musical Idlewild. A young boy nicknamed Rooster (played as a child by Bobb’e J. Thompson), who has been raised by a family of moonshine runners and gangsters in the economically fraught environment of the 1930’s, is given the gift of a silver flask that has a beaked rooster engraved in its design.
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Universal Pictures
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Outkast's Andre Benjamin
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All of a sudden, through the magic of CGI animation, the rooster on the flask begins talking to the boy. At this point, you’ll either scoff at the notion of a Depression-set story using special effects to bring inanimate objects to life, or you’ll be grinning to yourself at the audacity of such an odd gesture.
Count me in the latter camp. Idlewild takes the tried-and-true archetypes familiar from countless classical Hollywood melodramas and imbues them with sly but never campy contemporary flourishes in a way that would make Baz Luhrmann proud. So while the film’s characters include such recognizable figures as the slick lothario waiting to be spiritually humbled and the seductive chanteuse harboring a dark secret, the constantly inventive filmmaking also finds time for animated stick figures running across pages of sheet music, swing dancers jiving to modern hip-hop, and even frugally used (thank goodness) bursts of Matrix “bullet-time” violence.
It’s an auspicious feature debut for writer-director Bryan Barber, who may never hit any strong lump-in-the-throat moments in the way Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge did, and who definitely needs to work on some serious pacing issues, but who has nevertheless delivered something quite eye-popping and visionary his first time out of the gate.
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Universal Pictures
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Co-star Terrence Howard
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Barber’s training ground is in music videos for the acclaimed rap duo OutKast, and another function of the film is to jump-start the acting careers of that group’s two members, André “André 3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” A. Patton. To this end, Idlewild will do far more for the future film career of the surprisingly subtle, compelling Benjamin than it will for the big screen aspirations of the scowling, fairly wooden Patton. But putting that talent imbalance aside, it’s easy to imagine Barber, Benjamin, and Patton all collaborating to make a film that accurately reflects the wild, unpredictable eclecticism of OutKast’s music, and this is where Idlewild succeeds most satisfyingly.
Among the more telling signs of the movie’s adamant idiosyncrasy is that it keeps going back to that talking rooster flask as a sort of dramatic device. As little Rooster grows up (and is played as an adult by Patton), his metallic animal alter ego becomes a sort of conscience. And Rooster can certainly use the guidance. He works as the manager and headlining act of a down-and-dirty speakeasy called Church, and he spends much of his time off bedding obliging fans behind the back of his rightfully suspicious wife, Zora (Malinda Williams, flashing righteous anger with squirm-inducing believability).
No matter how ineffective that telltale flask is at talking Rooster out of infidelity, it starts to appear even more useless once Church’s boastful owner, “Sunshine” Ace (Faizon Love, whose crime of giving the film’s lone obnoxious performance is mitigated by the fact that he exits the proceedings early), is brutally killed by a mob henchman named Trumpy (Terrence Howard, exuding perfect silky-voiced menace). Trumpy psychotically takes advantage of his forcefully obtained power, leaning on Rooster to cough up exorbitant pay-offs in order to keep the club open.
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Universal Pictures
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Big Boi A. Patton
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While Rooster sweats to acquire money for Trumpy, his best friend from childhood, Percival (played as a kid by Bre’wan Waddell, and then as a grown-up by Benjamin), grapples meekly with his day job working the funeral parlor run by his widowed, embittered father (Ben Vereen) while dreaming of the musical success which his gig as pianist at Church offers only a small taste of.
Once the legendary diva Angel Davenport (Paula Patton, radiant) arrives to play at the speakeasy, she gives Percival just the kick in the rear end he needs to start realizing his goals. The two lock onto each other’s musical gifts immediately, and gradually fall in love. There is also, of course, the hint that Angel isn’t quite who she claims to be.
The problem with giving Rooster and Percival their own parallel storylines isn’t that it separates the two members of OutKast for long stretches of screen time; Barber’s frequent cross-cutting gives a good sense of interconnectedness between the two narrative strands, and besides, the duo’s double album “Speakerboxxx / The Love Below” already proved that Benjamin and Patton can make strong individual contributions to a joint collaboration.
But what makes bifurcating the story’s focus a problematic choice is that Barber, at least at this very early point in his film career, shows no aptitude for forward momentum. He establishes Rooster and Percival’s respective story arcs, and then lets the sluggish second act just reiterate the key points of those arcs. The result is a two-hour film that could’ve benefited from a 20-minute cut.
But where Barber excels is in mixing his music-video eye for striking visuals (the d.p. here is former Wim Wenders collaborator Pascal Rabaud) and dazzling musical interludes with a rooting interest in character. He gets a touching chemistry going between Percival and Angel, played by Benjamin and Paula Patton like lost souls inching towards each other with a renewed resilience.
This emotional investment pays off in the film’s irresistibly entertaining third act, which features shootouts, the grandly tragic demise of a major character, and an uplifting song-and-dance coda. It’s a finish as snug and conventionally rewarding as that of any Golden Age genre film - the closing title card even reads “fin,” in a nostalgic touch - so maybe those purists who wouldn’t normally embrace a musical in which an army of cuckoo-clock birds sing a number called “Chronomentrophobia” will still end up feeling gratified once Idlewild winds to a close.
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