140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW
How do you judge Purple Rain? The music is a contender for greatest soundtrack of all time. The movie’s dreadfully boring, pretentious mess.
Movie Review of Purple Rain:
I’m a huge fan of listening to movie scores and soundtracks, but I recognize that there’s a real danger to listening to a film’s soundtrack before seeing the movie. Instead of the music easing you further into the story, the recognition factor pulls you out of the moment. This may be less the case with musicals but it still is jarring.
In the case of Purple Rain, which is really just a long-form music video, the original audiences for the film probably experienced this to a much smaller degree, as the soundtrack album dropped only days before the film’s release. (Although the single “When Doves Cry” had been out for months.) For me, seeing this movie for the first time after listening to the soundtrack for 30 years, it was hard to get past. I was even more impatient during the filler story scenes than I perhaps would have been otherwise.
In Purple Rain, Prince plays The Kid (really), an arrogant, pretentious, self-absorbed, misogynist jerk who also is a phenomenally talented songwriter and musician – he’s Prince. Oddly enough, he’s about the only person in the whole movie who doesn’t use his real name for his character. The story concerns his tumultuous family life, love life and band life during his residency at the First Avenue nightclub. His parents are abusive, so he’s abusive and completely unlikable. He also has a puppet.
Everyone in the movie plays themselves, really, although I have no idea exactly how autobiographical this all is – and I don’t really care. The movie is a joyless mess, with bad pacing and worse dialogue. Absolutely no one in this movie is at all sympathetic and the non-musical scenes are slow and boring. There’s possibly a real movie in here somewhere, with the story of the abusive father, but no one involved in this production knows how to develop it.
The musical performances are of course wonderful. Or at least the music is. It can be a little distracting to see Prince acting out all of his lyrics and he has a tendency to point a lot, but I accept this as a minor inconvenience and part of the aforementioned problem with knowing the soundtrack so well. You will also be subjected to two performances by The Time and an unwatchable Apollonia 6 song.
When I saw the music videos played ad nauseum in 1984, I always thought it looked really funny to see Prince in his leathers and frilly shirts out by the lake. Turns out it’s even more ridiculous over the course of 111 minutes – just a guy and his heels, out in nature…
Finally, although these are generally spoiler-free reviews, I have to call out the denouement of this one, in which The Kid finally accepts the input of his bandmates and performs one of their songs, thus learning…wait, Prince? Accepting someone else’s input? The ending would have been more plausible if Morris Day turned into a dragon and ate everyone.
If you have somehow avoided this movie for 30 years, don’t break your streak now. Watch Sign O’ The Times…
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Pass
The Representation Test Score: C (4 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/) 
| Main Cast | Prince The Kid, Apollonia Kotero Apollonia, Morris Day Morris, Olga Karlatos Mother |
| Rating | R |
| Release Date | Fri 27 Jul 1984 UTC |
| Director | Albert Magnoli |
| Genres | Drama, Music, Musical, Romance |
| Plot | A young man with a talent for music has begun a career with much promise. He meets an aspiring singer… |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 111 |
| Tagline | |
| Writers | William Blinn (written by), Albert Magnoli (written by) |
| Year | 1984 |
