Quick Movie Reviews...kind of

Let me start by saying this, the reviews is in plural form in the title because there are some nasty rumors floating around the internets that I saw Step Up this past weekend. I'd like to say that it's a falsehood that I actually "saw" said movie, seeing that I didn't actually pay attention throughout the entire movie. But I will give some quick thoughts on it:

Negatives: Almost everything.

Positives: It was filmed in Maryland (mostly Baltimore)

The other movie I saw was Idlewild, which I had been mildly anticipating for some time. I can't decide if it lived up to the hype or not as I don't really recall there being that much hype for it.

It was an okay flick, nothing spectacular. Some of the camera work was really good, some of it wasn't. The story line was completely lifted from other sources, almost scene for scene. Although, I have to admit this was expected being that the director/writer Bryan Barber has never done any film work before outside of directing music videos. At many times the movie does seem like a long(er) music video. Also, I'm not really sure how I feel about people rapping during the 1930s prohibition era south. I understand OutKast is rap group, but it still seems pretty weird to me. The acting was solid outside of Big Boi (Antwan Patton) who probably needed some more coaching or something. You can at least tell that Andre 3000 at least works at being an actor.

The plot was pretty thin, but since I think a few of my myriad (laughter) readers haven't seen the movie I wont spoil it for you yet. However, the major disappointment for me was the soundtrack. This movie was filmed in 2004 and it's original soundtrack was supposed to be OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Unfortunately, they couldn't find a distributor in time for the album release so they pushed the movie back. Which is fine. What pisses me off is, OutKast did another album/soundtrack to coincide with the release of the movie now, and quite frankly the album sucks. It sounds sloppily made and only features them together on 2 songs. Much of the disdain I had saved up for the album was toned down by the fact that it was movie soundtrack for a film set in the 1930s so obviously it was going to sound a bit different from their other work. BUT 90% OF THE SONGS IN THE MOVIE ARE FROM SPEAKERBOXXX/THE LOVE BELOW!! On my count, 4 of the songs from this latest 19 song set, made the actual movie. And two were played at the very end as if they were just thrown in. So the question is...why make such a crappy sounding album/soundtrack, when the majority of the songs on it aren't going to be used in the movie anyway. I don't get it. Whatever.

Rating:

3 out of 5