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Avg. Critic Score: 55 out of 100 Mixed or average reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
16 Iffy for 16+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 91
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    Idlewild is a romp, a ticket to rowdy good times. Read full review

  • 70
    Washington Post | Teresa Wiltz

    For all its shortcomings, Idlewild also has something that few films can pull off: Moments of such pure cinematic fabulousness, breathtaking dance sequences and idiosyncratic 3-D animation flourishes that we are more than willing to forgive it for all its sins. Read full review

  • 70
    Variety |

    Achieves magic--something sorely missing from so many movies these days--and does so via a philosophy of respect, but not reverence, for what's come before it; it never recycles, it just reimagines. Read full review

  • 63
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    The music by Outkast is great, and the rowdy, randy en masse dance sequences are riveting. The story, however, is rather thin and lacks focus. Read full review

  • 50
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    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. Read full review

  • 50
    The Hollywood Reporter | Kirk Honeycutt

    An entertaining mess. It blends together musical styles and dances, historical periods with howling anachronisms, coy, almost childish gimmicks with R-rated sex and violence. Read full review

  • 50
    Los Angeles Times |

    Patton and Benjamin can both hold the screen and are great in their musical sequences, but sorry, they aren't actors -- Terrence Howard, as the villain Trumpy, blows them into dust when he's on camera -- and their limited expressiveness detracts from the film's hallucinatory edge. The plot fails them too, as it takes turns we've seen in a dozen melodramas. Read full review

  • 50
    San Francisco Chronicle |

    If Idlewild had something beyond OutKast's songwriting, it would make a swell musical. Read full review

  • 40
    The New York Times | Manohla Dargis

    The joint doesn't jump in the musical Idlewild; it just twitches and stumbles. As much a missed opportunity as a terrible tease. Read full review

  • 30
    Wall Street Journal |

    Shakespeare has been quoted many, many times over the past 400 or so years, but never to such empty purpose as in the inchoate, self-indulgent musical drama Idlewild, a star vehicle for the wildly popular hip-hop duo OutKast. Read full review

View more reviews for Idlewild on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+ Violent musical featuring OutKast. Not for kids.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this 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 talk about 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?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: Central dance action in a speakeasy called "Church" characters lie, kill, and cheat; woman pretends to be a well-known star.
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: Ace 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.
  • sex false5 Sex: Stage 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.
  • language false5 Language: Several instances of "f--k" and repeated use of n-word by black characters; repeated use of "s--t" and other curse words.
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Old-fashioned Pepsi sign in background.
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Rooster 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."
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

Looking for more reviews? Movies.com Critics Say:

Dave White

3.0

Dave White Profile See Dave White's Profile

… defines 'big crazy mess' for a new generation. Read full review See Dave White's on MOVIENAME on Movies.com

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