Saturday, September 9, 2006

Idlewild Review


Yes, it's a beautiful movie. Outside of that, there isn't much to go wild about.


Going from the small screen to the big screen is never easy. While there are guys like (most recently) Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry that'd be more than happy to disprove that, they had mastermind Charlie Kaufman to rely on for an outstanding starting point. With Idlewild, everything is up to the collaborative thoughts of Outkast and music video director Bryan Barber. Smell trouble yet? Let me put it this way, you've got a guy that hasn't had to worry about keeping an audiences attention for more than five minutes and two (granted, vastly talented, but still) rappers making a two hour movie. That being said, the movie is all style over substance in all the wrong ways. All of the atypical musical spectacle scenes are pretty much destroyed thanks to either poor editing, bad mixing or, in many cases, both. Even if you didn't like the film Chicago, you can at least admit that it had a flair about it that Idlewild often wishes it had. To make matters worse, the plotlines surrounding Big Boi and Andre 3000 never fully intersect. So what's left is a jumbled mess of a movie that doesn't even come close to living up to what it should be. On the positive side, there are some absolutely beautiful shots in this film, to the point where Barber seemed to spend more time in finding "the perfect shot" rather than developing any form of a storyline or plot. This movie is pretty much the blueprint of what can happen when a good idea goes terribly wrong and there's no one around to right the ship. What we're left with is a maddening mosh-posh of five minute interludes that hardly constitute as a movie. It may not the worst movie of the year, but it's certainly the most disappointing.


Overall Rating: 55


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