Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the film isn't appropriate for kids, who may know OutKast from the hit song "Hey Ya!" It includes stylized and graphic violence, mostly beatings and shootings of male gangsters, with bloody results (a woman is also shot, though she dies more "delicately" and melodramatically). Female stage dancers wear skimpy costumes, showing breasts (painted) and barely-covered derrieres. A mortician works on bodies, one arriving with blood under its head. A character considers suicide by hanging, going so far as to arrange the noose and chair in his house. A couple of sex scenes: one in the back of a car involves cunnilingus (a man is cheating on his wife); a second scene takes place in a bedroom. Characters use foul language, smoke cigars, cigarettes, and pipes, and drink lots of liquor and champagne in a speakeasy/whorehouse called "Church."
Families can discuss the friendship between Rooster and Percival. Though they hardly appear on screen together, how does the film connect them thematically and aesthetically? How are the protagonists' transformations significant, as the stereotypically "gangster" Rooster become a devoted family man and the shy Percival becomes a star piano player? How does the film use music (singing and dancing) to move the plot? How does Percival's decision to follow his dreams and leave his father's business affect his father?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Beautifully composed and infectiously energetic, IDLEWILD often seems more like a two-hour music video than a fully plotted movie. Frequent OutKast collaborator Bryan Barber's first feature extends the twofer project of their 2003 double album Speakerboxx/The Love Below, tweaking gangster movie conventions with brilliant choreography, hip-hop beats, and inventive visual compositions.
Set in 1935, in Idlewild, Georgia, the movie opens with a quick and visually quirky trot though what seems a standard best-friends-doomed-to-go-wrong history (the sort that shaped a series of Jimmy Cagney-Pat O'Brien movies during the '30s and '40s). Their class differences are defined by their family situations: Shy Percival (André Benjamin) is expected to follow a "proper" path, inheriting his mortician father's (Ben Vereen) business, while the parentless Rooster (Antwan A. Patton) is all about the hustle. The kids part ways for most of the film, save for the fact that Percival plays piano in "Church," the speakeasy/whorehouse where Rooster keeps the books and sings.
Enter the gangsters. Weary of overseeing proceeds and activities at Church, Spats (Ving Rhames) means to retire, but before he can decide on a successor, both he and manager Ace (Faizon Love) meet violent ends at the hands of Trumpy (Terrence Howard). An unseen witness to the murders, Rooster then tries to make his own profits by managing Church (buying "hooch" from local bootleggers) while paying off Trumpy, who decides the place belongs to him.
Percival has his own problems, trying to balance working for his father with playing the piano at night, while also falling in love with new and strangely nervous singer Angel (Paula Patton). While the friends' storylines only occasionally intersect -- Rooster and Percival meet at a funeral, and again at a showdown -- clever editing and color-scheming underline their thematic intertwining (for instance, when Rooster knocks on a door, Percival answers another). Their mutual loyalty helps both to achieve their different dreams.
Alternating between blood-splattery violence and fabulous, energetic, hip-hoppy dance numbers (as well as a knockout bluesy performance by Macy Gray as a singer called Taffy), in addition to Percival Sr.'s continued devotion to his long-dad wife and Rooster's seemingly divinely ordained encounter with a needy grandmother and her car full of kids (Cicely Tyson), Idlewild has too much going on. Its interest in dead women, emphasized via Percival's family business and turned precious by the camera, is also a little weird. But its mix of eras and aesthetics is invigorating, as are its fantastic dance numbers.
Families who like this movie might also like ATL, The Cotton Club, or the James Cagney classic, The Roaring Twenties.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentStage dancers appear naked from the waist up with breasts and torsos painted, feathers and thongs barely covering their bottoms; dancing is often sexualized; men slap women's bottoms (one man bites Rose's bottom); Rooster "goes down" on Rose, explicitly, from her POV; Rose moans with delight; Zora complains that Rooster cheats on her; a sex scene with naked breasts visible briefly. |
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ViolenceAce pulls a knife; Trumpy and his men commit several murders, with guns (bloody, explosive effects); Rose hits Rooster hard with a frying pan; Trumpy plays "Russian roulette" with his gun on a flunky; Trumpy and his men beat up Rooster, splatting blood; as a mortician, Percival treats corpses (film includes photos and long takes of bodies, some bloody, others "fixed"); a primary female character is shot and killed by accident, causing her lover to cry; a central character sets up to hang himself, and stops at the last minute. |
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LanguageSeveral instances of "f--k" and repeated use of n-word by black characters; repeated use of "s--t" and other curse words. |
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Social BehaviorCentral dance action in a speakeasy called "Church" characters lie, kill, and cheat; woman pretends to be a well-known star. |
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CommercialismOld-fashioned Pepsi sign in background. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoRooster carries a flask with an animated talking rooster that advises him; characters smoke cigarettes, cigars, and pipes regularly; Rooster collects "hooch" from bootleggers; characters drink liquor and champagne in the club, "Church." |
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