Idlewild

If a hot soundtrack and visual flair can save a movie, theres hope yet for Idlewild, the OutKast musical thats been finished and sitting on a shelf for two years. Its not hard to see why. This oddball mix of The Cotton Club and Six Feet Under is a big, beautiful mess. But it offers the not-uninstructive spectacle of talented people stumbling over large and unwieldy ambitions.

Andre 3000 Benjamin plays Percival, a tortured soul who embalms corpses at a funeral parlor run by his daddy (Ben Vereen). By night, he writes songs and pounds the keyboards at a speak-easy run by his pal Rooster, played by Benjamins OutKast partner, Antwan Big Boi Patton. Both give credible performances, though Terrence Howard, cast as the smooth, seductive villain, puts them deep in the shade.

Idlewild cant decide if its about bullets, booze, broads or the sound of hip-hop that the film strenuously tries to marry to the 1930s. Writer-director Bryan Barber, the house video wizard for OutKast, devises convoluted concepts involving animation. The engraved rooster on Roosters liquor flask comes alive and nags him like a parrot. Percivals clocks go berserk as a reminder that time is passing him by, and he one-ups the morticians on Six Feet Under by singing to the corpses. This is not OutKasts version of Disneys High School Musical.

Its also not a movie with a clear sense of direction, a strong spine to support its fancy conceits or even a nodding acquaintance with the conventional. Its like watching a dead body get up and dance. You sit there in horror and awe, thinking, What was that damn thing?