Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Idlewild Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 18, 2020

You’d probably have to be some kind of curmudgeon (ahem) or slightly obsessed music trivia buff (double ahem) to notice little things like, say, the appearance of a classic Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz bossa nova tune used as a source cue in an early episode of Mad Men, an episode which took place at least a year or two before the song actually came out, in just one example of some dunderheaded music placements that show up in both television shows and on the big screen from time to (incorrect) time. There’s probably going to be no such curmudgeonliness or trivia interest needed to divine that the hip hop and funk inflected music that populates a lot of Idlewild probably isn’t exactly era accurate to the film’s time period of the 1930s. That’s just one of the rather unusual elements about this film, not the least of which is that Idlewild is a quasi-musical that, as some fans might joke about this particular genre itself, has one foot in the grave, at least metaphorically speaking, since focal character Perceval (André 3000) is employed as an embalmer and "corpse preparer" at a funeral parlor owned by his father Percy (Ben Vereen).

Idlewild features the music of Outkast, and the popular duo is of course also featured as part of the film's ensemble cast. André "André 3000" Benjamin portrays Perceval, as mentioned above, and André's partner in crime in Outkast, Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, is on hand here as a literal criminal named Rooster. The film elides the childhoods of Perceval and Rooster with a kind of charmingingly frenetic montage of sorts that plays out under the opening credits, which details Perceval's "training" at his father's place of business, while Rooster gets "training" of another sort, turning into a bootlegger as a young adult. While Perceval spends his days at his father's mortuary, his nights are spent at a speakeasy cheekily called Church, where he plays the piano and where Rooster is rather improbably a "singing" star (more of a rapping star, but I digress). The fact that Idlewild supposedly takes place in 1935 (as evidenced by some passing lines of dialogue and at least one gravestone that's shown) might beg the question as to why there are bootleggers and speakeasies, since Prohibition ended in 1933, but Idlewild doesn't exactly aim for a documentarian approach in any regard.

There’s probably no way that Idlewild won’t remind many viewers at least in passing of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club, even if one is set in Harlem and one is set in a town in Georgia. But the similarities extend not just in terms of both films’ general milieu and the fact that they use performances in clubs as interstitial musical moments, but also due to the fact that Idlewild also exhibits some of the same attention deficit disorder structuring that I mentioned with regard to the Coppola film in our The Cotton Club Encore Blu-ray review. In some ways Idlewild might even be the more flagrant example of that syndrome, with several sequences built out of quick cuts between two simultaneously unfolding stories featuring different characters. It’s obviously an intentional gambit that seeks to draw comparisons and maybe even connections between various subplots, but it’s pretty clunkily handled at times here and may in fact do nothing more than lead to some confusion as to what’s actually going on.

There are a number of competing plot elements at play in Idlewild, and so the following summary is not necessarily an exhaustive list. The underlying premise of the film contrasts the more straight arrow Perceval with the more impetuous and criminally minded Rooster, and that aspect includes how they treat women. Rooster is a womanizer who is constantly cheating on his wife, despite having had five kids with her. On the other hand, when a supposed marquee star named Angel Davenport (Paula Patton) shows up at Church and perhaps uncharacteristically has a bit of stage fright, it’s Perceval who guides her through her jitters to stardom. Also woven into this tale is an organized crime element, first embodied by Spats (Ving Rhames) and Sunshine Ace (Faizon Love), but soon replaced by Spats’ underling Trumpy (Terrence Howard). (I’ll let you guess how Trumpy replaces Spats and Ace.) That sets Trumpy at odds with Rooster, who has taken over at Church, where Ace once ruled the roost.

The above may at least hint at some aspects of the plot, but what really sets Idlewild apart and may deliver some appeal to even those who find the actual story kind of a grabbag of clichés, is a rather playful visual style on the part of writer and director Bryan Barber. Barber evidently got his start making music videos, and it certainly shows here, not necessarily only with regard to some spectacularly staged musical sequences (another link to The Cotton Club is how the energy noticeably spikes during the singing and dancing sequences, and then ebbs pretty noticeably in some of the dramatic moments). There are a whole host of little “treats” Barber buries in the frame, from a flask of whiskey with a mascot who comes magically alive and gives Rooster his nickname, to some of the staves of Perceval’s piano music, which suddenly support animated stick figures carrying out various shenanigans.

Idlewild Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Idlewild is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Studios with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. With a 50GB disc and not much in the way of supplements, you'd think there would be plenty of real estate for a superior presentation of the 35mm source (reportedly finished at a 2K DI, according to the IMDb), but there are some odd looking things going on here which I'll attempt to document. Before I get to the bad, though, I'll begin with a preface that when this presentation looks good (which is quite a bit of the time), it looks very good indeed, with good detail levels and a nicely burnished, vivid palette. However, grain can look fairly variable throughout and there are a prevalence of moments that don't just look yellow and splotchy, but get close to pixellated territory (I suggest looking at, for example, the "white" shirt in screenshot 13, or the hazy background in screenshot 15, or at Rooster's lips and chin area in screenshot 18, though that is pixellated more toward purple). If you can overlook these anomalies, a lot of Idlewild is very enjoyable to watch, especially given Barber's quite acute visual sense. I'm scoring this at 3.0 at least in part to temper expectations, and some may feel that the good outweighs the bad.

Idlewild Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Idlewild features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that delivers good surround activity in any number of song and dance sequences, but also courtesy of non musical moments that can feature large groups of people. I personally thought some of the vocals in the songs were mixed too low (something that I noticed with regard to some of the music videos offered as supplements, so maybe it's an "Outkast thing"). Otherwise, though, fidelity is excellent, with a nicely full bodied sound throughout. Dialogue is delivered cleanly and clearly, and that element at least seemed to me to be mixed a bit hotter than some of the vocals.

Idlewild Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This is another pretty bare bones Universal release without even a Main Menu, though there are a few bonus items available via the Pop Up Menu:

• Deleted Scene: Rooster Takes Family Shopping (1080p; 2:24)


• Deleted Song: "The Clock" (1080p; 3:54)


• "Morris Brown" Music Video by Big Boi (1080p; 4:33)


• "Idlewild Blue" Music Video by Andre 3000 (1080p; 4:17)

The disc is a bit clunkily authored in my not so humble opinion, with each supplement exiting back out to the main feature, where you then need to press Pop Up Menu again, access the next supplement, and then rinse and repeat several times (so to speak). A couple of these have some weird authoring anomalies as well where thin white lines appear either at the top or the bottom of the frame that almost look like some kind of electronic interference that happened during the transfer process.

Idlewild Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Idlewild is what I might term a noble failure, in that it has ambition galore and some really interesting ideas, but which might have benefited from more shaping. Barber is a stylist of some note, and even those who don't, um, cotton to certain elements of the plot and characterizations may still enjoy the carnival like visual atmosphere he brings to the proceedings. And let's face it -- how many films can you name that feature a musical moment built around an embalmer preparing a corpse for burial? Video has some odd looking moments (I highly recommend interested fans carefully parse the screenshots accompanying this review), but audio is generally fine, though I personally found some of the lead vocals buried too far into the mix. Some of the supplemental music videos are definitely on the trippy side.