Saturday, August 26, 2006

Idlewild is indeed wild

Andre 3000 and Big Boi, who make up the rap duo OutKast, have always lived up to their group name, stretching what we consider hip-hop to far-out extremes. And here's the thing: they manage to sell millions of record by predictably being unpredictable.
Which brings us to their new movie, Idlewild, a brilliant mess of a movie.
Andre is Percival, a piano player who is a mortician by day, slaving away for his dad, played by an underused Ben Vereen. Big Boi plays his friend, Rooster, who spends his nights running "Church," the local jukejoint, cheating on his wife and drinking way too much hooch.
Into all this enters Trumpy played by the always mesmerizing and menacing Terrence Howard (a friend wondered how he is so good at playing bad) who is the film's villain.
Percival and Rooster now have to figure out how to keep from getting killed.
Now, all of this is set in the 1930s Prohibition era, though you may have a hard time believing that with all the rapping Big Boi does in the movie. Yes, there's rapping but again what else would you expect from an OutKast movie.
Horns blast, Big Boi raps, Andre gets drenched in rain and men and women jitterbug all over the place. And somehow, this movie works, with visual treats provided by first-time movie director Bryan Barber, who infuses his debut with all the tricks of the trade he learned while making music videos.
As my friend and I walked out of the theater, we had a hard time describing exactly what we saw. But we liked it. We were never bored.
Again, what else would you expect of OutKast?

1 comment:

Not Your Average Chimichanga said...

i still don't know how to feel about this movie. i haven't seen it, but something about it just screams, DANGER.

the last movie i saw where i walked out of the theatre not knowing what to say was Monster's Ball. Um, yeah, i still don't know what that was about.