Idlewild 2006

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Idlewild doesn't exactly hang together, but its parts are something to behold. Read more

Ted Fry, Seattle Times: Comic, dramatic, highly conceptual and all great fun. Read more

Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune: Idlewild is an engaging, original movie musical. It turns all sorts of pop cultural icons on their heads and delivers a smart commentary on race and class in 20th Century America. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Director Bryan Barber (known for his music videos) and his cast display so much gusto that it's hard to keep up your resistance -- I wound up finding this more enjoyable than the Oscar-bestrewn Chicago. Read more

Joanne Kaufman, Wall Street Journal: Shakespeare has been quoted many, many times over the past 400 or so years, but never to such empty purpose as in the inchoate, self-indulgent musical drama Idlewild Read more

Neva Chonin, San Francisco Chronicle: Idlewild comes alive only during the production numbers, which look and feel more like music videos than music as storytelling. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: You don't have to have a stylistic device in every single shot. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Idlewild is what it is, though you may never be quite sure what that 'is' is. Still, it's a professional-looking picture, filled with talented, likable performers who give it their best. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: It's a vehicle for OutKast's music and personality in which the music and lead roles feel like afterthoughts. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: A movie so oblivious to convention and structure that it seems like a Jackson Pollock splatter-painting, without the crucial 'genius' part. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: A sludgy, badly photographed, poorly edited bungle whose musical numbers never pop. Read more

Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times: In its best moments Idlewild connects with OutKast's weirdness. At its worst, the film trades in the very cliches about romance, redemption and music that listeners run to OutKast to avoid. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: OutKast's much-ballyhooed Prohibition-era musical is a dense, confusing jumble of old-school and new-school, gangster and gangsta, that never pauses long enough to tell a cogent story. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Welcome to Church, the speakeasy in the often vivacious, sometimes silly, musical Idlewild. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Idlewild is a romp, a ticket to rowdy good times. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Those who do not succumb to the movie's fantasy will dismiss it as an extended music video. That's not an unfair criticism, but it doesn't make the film any less enjoyable. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Despite some visual sparkle and musical razzle-dazzle, Idlewild is a messy movie. Read more

Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly: The film only rarely harnesses the power of the anachronistic, funk-driven, beat-heavy rap music that swells its soundtrack. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: There are enough qualities in Idlewild to make you believe not only in [director] Barber's potential, but in a fruitful marriage of hip-hop sensibility with the movie musical genre. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: The OutKast epic Idlewild is an amazingly misguided film, a muddled attempt to create an old school Hollywood musical showcasing the unique hip-hop duo. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The first film from OutKast iconoclasts Andre Benjamin (Andre 3000) and Antwan A. Patton (Big Boi) has all the wit and creativity of their music videos. And here's the bad news: That makes it at least an hour too long. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: A misguided period-piece musical about gangsters, illegal 'hooch,' 'floozies' and music that is almost entirely unlike jazz. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: There's nothing compelling about the characters or story, and that maroons Idlewild within the category of disposable entertainment. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Between the gangsters and the showgirls, the gorgeous costumes and the wowser production numbers, Idlewild has just about everything a popular entertainment can offer. It also has a soul, and that comes free with the price of a ticket. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: If, like me, you like OutKast just fine but staggered out of Moulin Rouge reeling from the quick-cut-induced nausea, you'll leave Idlewild tapping your toe and scratching your head at the same time. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Jim DeRogatis, Chicago Sun-Times: In the end, the saddest thing about Idlewild is that all of the pieces were present for a very good film. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Idlewild is so eccentric it remains compellingly watchable. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: A series of pretty-good pop videos wrapped around a confusing tale of Chitlin' Circuit striving and conniving. Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: For a band whose music is suffused with such delicate irony, you'd expect at the very least for there to be a few laughs along the way? There are none. Nothing. Zero. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: By jumbling genres, fashions, music and locales, and riddling bullets through much of it, Idlewild ends up feeling disjointed and disquieting. Read more

John Anderson, Variety: [Idlewild] achieves magic -- something sorely missing from so many movies these days -- and does so via a philosophy of respect, but not reverence, for what's come before it; it never recycles, it just reimagines. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Idlewild has a sober, loving respect for history and the old South, and thereby grants itself a measure of distinction. Read more

Teresa Wiltz, Washington Post: For all its shortcomings, Idlewild also has something that few films can pull off: Moments of such pure cinematic fabulousness, breathtaking dance sequences and idiosyncratic flourishes that we are more than willing to forgive it for all its sins. Read more