I didn't know much about OutKast, the duo co-starring in Idlewild, until I ran into their last album, Speakerboxx/The Love Below, so my impression of them is relatively fresh. The one thing that immediately struck me about this hip-hop pair, consisting of the hardcore rapper Antwan "Big Boi" Patton and the musically experimental André "André 3000" Benjamin, was how a conspicuous current of creativity must run through them. Based on the album and the singles/videos that emerged from it (including the ubiquitous "Hey Ya!"), I noticed this was a group not afraid to branch out. Now, along with their longtime video director Bryan Barber, they've made a movie that offers further evidence of their willingness to try different creative avenues.

Idlewild is a surprise in so many ways, starting with the visuals that leap out at you. As directed by Barber, it's highly stylized, incorporating color filters, animation, and some photo trickery. It's a musical, which might be expected, but it's also set in the 1930's Prohibition South, making it a period piece resplendent with snazzy old costumes and hairstyles. The look is classic while the music is modern, though inspired by the music of the times. Effectively two parallel stories following a pair of childhood friends -- the high-living Rooster (Patton) and quiet Percival (Benjamin) -- the movie has the gumption to weave a love story and follow-your-dreams ideals with a bullets-and-gangsters drama featuring a path to redemption and responsibility. "Unconventional" only begins to describe it.

Idlewild's brazen approach to cinematic entertainment is one of its brightest lights. Musical artists trying to make movies can easily fall into the usual traps, from playing out biopic-like stories of rises to fame, to turning such affairs into self-indulgent vanity projects. But what's wonderful about Barber, Patton, and Benjamin's approach to Idlewild is how boldly it tackles the promotion of communal ideals, beginning with history and culture and ending with themes of personal encouragement. The cast is entirely black (right down to the extras), yet the movie communicates a universal appeal and a real warmth in the past lifestyle -- it emerges as a noticeable strength, breathing life into an imagined milieu. The movie becomes a way for a community to take claim of and reshape its own past with an approach that's admittedly rosy, but it also displays a vigorous rooting interest in that past as well as a love of it that's refreshing and contagiously enthusiastic.

I'm looking at this mainly from a general cultural standpoint, and not necessarily just the African-American one. When any culture or community is represented in mass media entertainment, there's usually a tendency to have such groups pigeonholed -- women can be trapped in weepies, Asians are handed stuff like Memoirs of a Geisha, and black entertainment might glorify gangster street cred. It's rare for any such group to represent themselves in an empowerment fantasy such as Idlewild, and even rarer to approach one with such gusto.

This movie woofs and hoofs, puts levity and gravity in violence and death, and most importantly seeks what is humane about the community and cultural history it's depicting. If the film seems corny and predictable at some points, remember that it's doing so with cast members who usually might not get the opportunity to play out something so old-fashioned, in a setting that few, even in its target audience, may give a second thought to. It's a bold blast of a movie from a pioneering enterprise; if OutKast has more movies lined up in its future, I'll expect to be pleasantly surprised again.

(Released by Universal Pictures and rated "R" for violence, sexuality, nudity and language.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com.