Universal shall release no schizophrenic hip-hop-pop hybrid retro-musical before its time.

OutKast members Andre Benjamin, left, Antwan A. Patton) star in the '30s-flavored musical "Idlewild." Click photo for larger image. 'Idlewild' Rating: R for violence, sexuality, nudity and language. Starring: Andre Benjamin, Antwan A. Patton, Terence Howard, Paula Patton, Macy Gray. Director: Bryan Barber. Web site: www.idlewildmovie.net 'Related stories' OutKast mines the 1930s for new film and CD For the Record: 8/24/06

For lo these past two years, the studio has been trepidatious about "Idlewild," a hugely ambitious work of genre-blending and bending that is wild but never idle -- an anachronistic extravaganza of African-American music and dance. Sex and violence, too.

Andre Benjamin and Antwan A. Patton -- aka Andre 3000 and Big Boi of wildly popular OutKast -- are the stars as well as composers of the show, which was written and directed by their music-video collaborator Bryan Barber. The peripatetic pastiche of a plot combines elements of "Cotton Club" with "Six Feet Under" but owes its basic concept -- booze, broads, gangsters and musicians on the run during Prohibition -- to "Some Like It Hot."

It's 1932, and the hot nightclub/cathouse in Idlewild, Ga. , is the naughtily named "Church." Club manager Rooster (Patton) is leaned on by gangster Trumpy (Terrence Howard), who knocks off Ving Rhames and fat Faizon Love for control of the bootleg business that supplies the place.

Rooster's childhood pal Percival (Benjamin), meanwhile, is a shy mortician who moonlights playing piano at the club. The new singer-sensation Angel (Paula Patton) there will be coaxing him into ditching his domineering daddy (Ben Vereen) at the funeral parlor, to follow her and his own song-and-dance star to Chicago.

There's more Broadway than real black culture in this highly stylized "retro-modern" period piece, highlighted by the vibrant bacchanalian choreography of Hinton Battle. The dancing, like the music, is a freestyle fusion of swing, hip-hop, jazz, jitterbug, breakdance -- you name it, from Cab Calloway R&B routines to blues, rag and contemporary urban pop. Some of the dozen or so OutKast compositions are better than others, but "Movin' Cool (The After Party)" is the most thoroughly delightful.

Patton (whose acting coach was Vereen) and Benjamin both turn out to be competent actors, playing more-than-cardboard characters. Smooth-as-silk Howard -- so fine in "Hustle and Flow" -- is solid here, too. Patton aims for Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge but hits Whitney Houston at best. There are nice appearances by Macy Gray and the great Cicely Tyson (from whom Rooster gets religion). Don't blink, or you'll miss the lamentably wasted Patti LaBelle.

Mostly, don't blink or miss Pascal Rabaud's lush, stunning cinematography and the surreal pastel lighting that infuses the dance sequences. Also to be savored are the nifty opening credits, in which single figures emerge surreally from group photographs.

Weird touches of animation -- a back-talkin' rooster on Rooster's flask, a chorus of cuckoo clocks in Percival's bedroom, the sheet-music notes with a cartoon life of their own -- provide unpredictable moments of fun. A necrophiliac love scene, in which the mortician sings tearily while making up a beloved corpse, does not.

Some will object to such oddly conceived and misplaced "production values." Personally, I found the funky insanities charming and object only to the clunky banalities (those poignant lessons of love, loss, family and overcoming stage fright) that we're supposed to care about before, during and after "A Star Is Born."

But I dare you not to be entertained by the most dazzling and daring effusion of all-black talent since Spike Lee's "Bamboozled." And if you go, don't rush out before the lights go up: The film's best "traditional" song-and-dance number takes place during the final credits.

Just keep in mind "Idlewild's" artistic and commercial origins. What you see is less what you get than what you hear: Everything visual about this movie is really secondary to its soundtrack album -- soon to go platinum for OutKast at a record store near YOU!