InstaRapFlix #29: Outkast: Dare To Be Different

"The thing that makes Outkast different from everybody else is they wear what the Hell they wanna wear!" That's the opening line. Outkast fans, did you take their music seriously? Sorry, but you'll soon learn their success is entirely due to the vintage clothes they wear. Maybe I just don't appreciate fashion (actually, I know I don't), but that seems a little potentially insulting to me. But then again, you probably won't notice, considering how much more insulting the rest of this film is.

Netflix lists Outkast: Dare To Be Different as 60 minutes, but when you start to play it, you'll see it's really only 41. That should be your first indication that this movie (Netflix rating: a very generous 2 out of 5 stars) is not what you might hope.

It starts us out with an anonymous narrator who confuses the definition of "irony" with "coincidental." She gives us Outkast's basic back-story over a series of press photos. The narration's sometimes pretty funny - I love the way she matter-of-factly states, "Dre often got high while waiting to rob people." Or "Dre's style of dress had people wondering if he had lost his mind, was on hard drugs, or they even thought he was a homosexual." She doesn't even have her facts right (stating Aquemini dropped in 1996, etc).

We get some sloppily-edited EPK footage of Andre talking about his latest album: "it's inspired by the hats - I love the hats! - and the boots the polo players wear." And we get some really horrible green-screen footage of random people - I guess they're just fans - talking about Outkast:

...It actually looks a lot better in that still than it does when he's moving - click to enlarge it. That diagonal line in the bottom left is the wall behind him that they didn't key out, and his arm (his left, our right) doesn't even reach the bottom of the screen.

Anyway, after that we come back to the narrator. That's really the bulk of this film: one woman reading Outkast's bio over some album covers and press photos. We do occasionally go back to the video footage for a few seconds here and there, but it ain't much... In fact, they go back and play the same interview clips multiple times - I can only assume this was a mistake and nobody involved with the production even bothered to watch the movie all the way through!

I did learn a little bit though, I have to admit. I have a bunch of Outkast albums and singles, but I didn't realize "what they became famous for: wearing large caps and dressing in white linen." Once again, I guess it's my fashion cluelessness coming through. White linen was it.

Seriously, I really can't express how much of a non-movie this even is. When the narrator says Big Boi started his own pitbull kennels, the photo isn't even of his kennels - just generic pitbull photos I guess they Googled. I was expecting some unexceptional little collection of interviews edited into a simple little life story, but what I discovered was something exceptionally bad. This is just what they mean when they use the phrase "hot mess." I am actually stunned by what a hunk of junk this is. Only the most desperate, content-starved Outkast fan will want to seek this one out. But at least the user reviews trashing this on the site were kinda amusing.