Snakes alive, would you look at those threads? Stylish enough to make The Devil Wears Prada look like charity-shop tat, Idlewild is better known as The Outkast Movie. Like their faux-60s video for ‘Hey Ya’, which depicted girls of every race screaming in sexual ecstasy for our back heroes in an era when such behaviour was probably outlawed in several states, the film remodels depression-era America as Jarman’s Carivaggio.
As an extended music video, the film delivers all the razzmatazz we’ve come to expect from Andre and Big Boi. Cuckoo clocks dance and sing as small animals once did in the promo for ‘Miss Johnson’. Gorgeous black chorus girls flash their ‘sassy drawers’ with aplomb in spirited and beautifully choreographed music numbers.
Shame the plot can’t ignite in quite the same way. Crucially, we never really care about the heroine (Patton) or buy the idea of Andre as a lovelorn bachelor.
Yeah right. Everybody knows he don’t want to meet our mommas. Still, it’s a far, far better thing than Moulin Rouge.