Idlewild.

"It's not a condemnation to note that Idlewild has a lot in common with Prince's first film flop," writes Ann Powers in a consideration of both the film and the album for the Los Angeles Times. "Both projects followed a breakthrough moment for a forward-thinking act who'd made it deeper into the mainstream than anyone expected." As for the film at hand, "the dance sequences alone make Idlewild worth seeing." Even so:

This isn't what we need from OutKast. With hits like "Hey Ya!" and "Rosa Parks," the duo has come closer to confronting the troubling hyperboles of black American culture - the legacies of blackface and coon song - than virtually any other hip-hop-era artist. OutKast's seriously comic take on black eccentricity speaks volumes about the historical weight of notions like "freakiness." Their film needs more of that freakiness, instead of the three-hankie sentimentality that dominates.

"Idlewild has a sober, loving respect for history and the old South, and thereby grants itself a measure of distinction," writes Michael Atkinson in the Voice. "The film is so cornpone that class and poverty aren't even issues."

Updated through 8/27.

Earlier: Jonathan Dee in the New York Times Magazine and Nick Schager in Slant.

Updates, 8/24: "Under the Graffiti Bridge in the Purple Rain" pops up fairly early in Ernest Hardy's review for the LA Weekly; in short, he argues that the movie has its moments but never really comes together.

Armond White in the New York Press: "Despite its grinning fascination with the Jazzbo style of past eras, Idlewild takes such a flashy approach to African-American showbiz history that it winds up being absolutely ahistorical - and unsatisfying."

For Cinematical's Kim Voynar, it's "a fantastically creative film that could - and should - garner a bevy of Oscar nominations."

"Idlewild has moments of sticky sentimentality and stretches of dull exposition, but you've got to give it this: It's unpredictable." Slate's Dana Stevens finds "the world of Idlewild is so heterogeneous, so devil-may-care about shifts in mood and tone and genre, that it winds up feeling like six different movies elbowing for space on the same screen."

Manohla Dargis in the New York Times: "The narrative compression that works so well for [director Bryan] Barber in his music videos for OutKast, particularly in pastiches like 'Hey Ya!' and 'Roses,' damages Idlewild beyond repair."

Updates, 8/25: Teresa Wiltz in the Washington Post: "For all its shortcomings, Idlewild also has something that few films can pull off: moments of such cinematic fabulousness, breathtaking dance sequences and idiosyncratic 3-D animation flourishes that we are more than willing to forgive it for all of its sins."

Online viewing tip. Karina Longworth for "Netscape at the Movies."

Updates, 8/26: Stephanie Zacharek in Salon: "Idlewild is a wild, sprawling movie, one that's bound to be underestimated and misunderstood. But maybe the best way to read it is to treat it as a dream history, as a testament, to borrow [Stanley] Crouch's words, to the ways that inventing, borrowing and refining can bring us closer to the lives we want to lead - yet even within that framework, there's no guarantee of happiness."

Joe Leydon: "When it comes to Idlewild, there is good news, and then there is great news, because the last big blast of the summer - or, if you prefer, the first great movie of the fall - also happens to be one of the very best movies of the year."

"[I]t's too easy for critics to be reductive about Idlewild," argues Alex P Kellogg in the American Prospect. "I'd encourage them to think of Zora Neale Hurston's plays [which] were notable more for their celebration of the language, music, dance, and humor of everyday people than their neat dramatic arcs."

No, writes Will Doig for Nerve, "there are too many inexcusable moments in Idlewild to simply look the other way."

Updates, 8/27: "Does it jell?" asks New York's David Edelstein. "Hell, no! But a lot of invigorating American pop-culture epics are mishmashes - genre-bending follies that end up being more than the sum of their incongruities. Idlewild aims high and sends out lots of entertaining sparks."

Cinematical's James Rocchi: "Idlewild challenges two worlds - Hollywood and Hip-Hop - that can, in their way, be hidebound by conservatism and convention and gives them both a good shake. That alone makes Idlewild exciting; that alone makes Idlewild worth seeing; that alone makes you wonder what Outkast and Barber might try next."

Posted by dwhudson at August 23, 2006 10:31 AM