IDELWILD starts with a bang, splashing across the screen with a raucous exuberance full of sass, attitude, and an irreverent visual sense that enhances the edginess to the life the protagonists have chosen. If it weren’t for a love story that plops itself in the middle of it, this would have been a classic. As it stands, the shopworn cliché of the soulful, small-town piano player (Andre Benjamin of OutKast) in love with the sultry chanteuse (Paula Patton) from the big city has less sizzle than saccharine, failing in every respect to match the passion or the energy of the rest of the film. Darn.
IDLEWILD is whistle-stop in Georgia. The time Prohibition and that piano player is Percy (Benjamin), the straight-laced heir to his father’s mortuary business. Still waters run deep, though, and thanks to his lifelong pal, Rooster (strutting Antwan A. Patton AKA Big Boi, the other half of OutKast) he spends his nights pursuing his true passion, playing piano at the Church. It’s an ironically named honky tonk with a floor show with Rooster as the headliner that anticipates the excesses of Las Vegas, fluffy showgirls in feathers and all, or rather, less. Prohibition being what it is, the Church’s proprietor, Sunshine Ace (Faizon Love), buys illegal hooch. Hence gangsters, hence the shootout, hence Rooster finding himself in charge and responsible for the club’s debts, hence him finding himself in the uncomfortable position of keeping at bay both Trumpy (Terrence Howard), the gangster squeezing him for protection money while upping the price of his hooch, and his wife Zora (Malinda Williams), who is one dalliance with a showgirl away from taking their five kids and leaving. The only question is how much damage she’s going to do to Rooster before she leaves.
Writer/director Bryan Barber, veteran of OutKast videos, understands using music to drive a narrative, as well as how to create arresting visuals with a sleek style as well as a palpable pizzazz. It’s the narrative dialogue that stymies him. When Benjamin and Patton are pitching woo at one another, it fails to ignite for all the suppressed longing that Benjamin conveys with a darting glance from a half-closed eyes. Slightly more successful are the silent clashes between Percy and his father (Ben Vereen), who suffer poignantly at cross-purposes and expectations with a tragic restraint, but mouth lines that are irreversibly inert while doing so. Balancing the film’s thud is Howard as the villain of the piece. As smooth as ice and twice as cold, wielding a gun or a sneer that is just as lethal, he has a star quality that fills up the screen as much as the visual dynamism that is the film’s real draw.
All the action exists in a sort of dreamtime, where the recurring motif of the rooster on Rooster’s flask commenting on the action, or the notes on Percy’s music scores cavorting across the paper with puckish abandon fit right in to the heightened reality on display. It’s that mood that makes a hip-hop song work in a Depression Era juke joint, a diva’s spike-heels jive with her sequined Flapper finery, and a wall full of clocks over Percy’s bed makes sense whether or not he’s singing a song about how time flies while the camera swoops to underscore that effect. Barber plays with the camera giddy camera effects and blends them effortlessly with quiet juxtapositions that tell lifetimes of stories with a miraculous economy.
IDLEWILD translates the musical into a new arena, respectful of its traditions, but reinterpreted and refreshed. When it’s good, it leaps off the screen in an adrenaline rush, and in the end, that’s might just be enough.
Your Thoughts?