Which brings us to the all-important questions: Can Benjamin and Patton act as well as they rap? Why have these traditional go-against-the-grainers embraced the vanity movie so popular among hip-hop's blingocracy?
The answer to the first question is no. Idlewild screens like metaphor for Benjamin's and Patton's real lives. They play longtime friends (which they are) from opposite sides of the proverbial track. Benjamin is Percival, a shy mortician's son who plays piano at The Church, the 1930s-era speakeasy where Rooster (Patton), a scandalous, hooch-drinking, womanizing son of a moonshine bootlegger, is the club's bread-winning act. As fate would have it, the club's owner gets bodied by an ambitious thug (Terrence Howard), leaving Rooster to run the place and pay off all its debts. So begins the movie's gangsterized/business portion, with Rooster procuring moonshine from a third party and tightening club operations—cracking down on pilfering bartenders and cracking the whip on lazy singers and dancers, even forcing a career moocher who's been with the club for years has to pay up.
As Rooster lives out his Donald Trump wishes and sex-on-the-side dreams (he has a wife and four kids), Percival juggles relationships—trying to get out from under his father's oppressive thumb and trying to get in good with a glamorous singer who's inked a four-week deal to sing at the club. Speaking of the club: The Church is supposed to be a speakeasy, and while it does have the seedy and smoky part down, how many southern Georgia speakeasies—then or now—mix swing, jazz, burlesque dance, showgirl sexuality, speed rapping and more dance-floor choreography than an N'Sync video and more acrobatics than a tumbling class? None, probably. Trying those moves in a club, then or now, is likely a sure way to get your ass kicked. By the midpoint of the movie, you're hoping for some OutKastian twist—some "Hey Ya"-like fun, maybe, or at least something to get you to care whether Rooster settles his debt and gets his family back; whether Percival gives Dad the peace sign and proceeds to move to Chicago with his new love, both of which happen and both of which are so uninspiring, so with the grain—in other words, everything OutKast's music isn't. As for why they chose to play it safe in their first full-on feature (Benjamin had a role in Four Brothers, Patton in ATL) Patton told MTV the movie was like an "OutKast album but on film." Which is a lie. OutKast doesn't make bad music.