Purple Rain

No movie has ever has as much impact on me as Purple Rain. And isn't that one of the signs of a great movie? I remember a colorless year of what I considered very boring music. Then Prince came along with his music & movie and painted the world purple for a brief moment in time. I don't care how feminine Prince was, he was getting the best looking girls and he was my hero. I saw the movie in the theatres four times that year & I still long for the days when it was seen in widescreen format on the big screen being played LOUD. To me, a guy who normally marvels at the cinematography of Hitchcock and has a video collection of over 600 movies, Purple Rain is flawless. It is a movie that can be screened 20 years from now and will still survive the test of time. Prince, today, is too serious & strange to be fun anymore, but there was a time when he was alot of fun & this movie documents that time. From the very second the movie starts, it creates a mood with flashes of images that stay in the mind as much as the images of Citizen Caine do. Prince takes us on a journey & gives us a peek at what it was like to be around that great Minneapolis sound at it's birth. Morris Day & Jerome Benton were as good a comedy team as any. And they, with The Time, add two really good songs as well. But it is Prince's music that completes the movie & makes it what it is: a movie I can pull out every five years and really enjoy.

It's no use. Arguments about the potato-chip thin script, the haphazard direction and some of the most laughable non-acting ever photographed for a film, will prove ineffectual. Such conditions have existed in the realm of film vehicles for music stars since the genre began, (with some mind-boggling examples of the worst of the lot offered by every star from Elvis, to Frankie Avalon, to Vanilla Ice.) What you watch these movies for is not the deep plots, solid writing or impeccable direction. It's for those moments of electricity that leap off the screen, strike you right in the butt and have you dancing in your theater seat, as the magic of a performer at his or her peak, in their heyday, turns a few minutes of film into a literal celebration of life.

Such is the case with PURPLE RAIN, the one film that, as far as I'm concerned, effectively captured the raw essence of the good ol' "ME" Decade.

In a thinly-disguised version of the events that shaped his career and his life, The Purple One starred as a brilliant songwriter and musician simply known in Minnesota music circles as "The Kid." There are three distinct storylines, all of which have been around since Mickey and Judy put on shows for the neighborhood. One documents the intensive rivalry existing between Prince's band and the Time, fronted by the charismatic poseur and self-described "Lay-deez Man" Morris Day, (who in a satirical and self-effacing performance, manages to effectively steal every scene he is in.) The battle is waged nightly at Minneapolis' legendary First Avenue Club, (where Prince really did get his start with other leading lights like Andre Cymone, Jesse Johnson and Morris).

In the second, the two frontmen battle even harder for the affections of new-girl-in-town Appolonia (Appolonia Kotero, in her debut, and biggest screen role to date.)

The third reflects "The Kid's" struggle with his inner demons and the source of his problems dealing with his career and his personal relationships: the volatile, strained marriage between his equally brilliant but tragically broken father, Francis L. (Clarence Williams III) and headstrong mother (Olga Karlatos). The scenes between the three of them have provoked uncontrollable snickers with their over-the-top hystrionics, but those few moments they work, they do carry an undeniable power, and a window into "The Kid's" tortured psyche that fans were only privy to before through the music.

And ultimately, that is what PURPLE RAIN is all about: the power of music to transcend, transform and uplift everything it touches for good or for ill, though good is ultimately the strongest influence it exudes. Prince's chart-topping, Oscar winning song score found The Artist at his dazzling best, and director Magnoli made a wise call including as much scintillating concert footage as possible.

The Battle of the Bands sequences are wondrous to behold, with both The Revolution and The Time at their tightest, loosest and funkiest all at once. Even the vocally-deficient, amply-augmented Appolonia 6 (formerly Vanity 6) sparkles.

The remaining cast all do the best they can with what moments they're given, the standouts besides Williams III and Karlatos being the hysterical rapport between Day and Time mascot Jerome Benton, and some refreshingly confrontational moments between "The Kid" and former bandmates Wendy and Lisa, which threaten at times to edge into the territory of cinema verite, rather than just popcorn-driven melodrama.

But capturing one of the decade's defining cultural touchstones is the true purpose of PURPLE RAIN, and to this day, you can talk to people who can still remember where they were and what day and time it was the first time they heard "When Doves Cry." With "1999" running a close second, this was Prince's masterwork, and even though he still produces material with flashes of profane, profound, funk-fueled brilliance, he still has yet to top the creative bar he raised for himself and everybody else back in 1984.

An overall score of 6.5 is generous, it's so bad. But I dare you not to carry on watching. Mesmerizing in it's nostalgic beauty yet, obviously, hugely flawed in every way you'd judge a film without a global popstar in the starring role. Think Labyrinth and Moonwalker, except this is much thinner on the story front and laughable as far as acting goes. But so addictive.

The main attraction is the music, of course. Purple Rain is an iconic album. It's one of those films that is so bad it's good, before that became a genre in itself. Prince was always his own man and it shows in how this film is put together but 6.5 on IMDb usually means a divisive film with huge merits in either acting, direction, story or soundtrack. This film only has the soundtrack....but you still need to watch.

It's probably fair to say that as a movie, "Purple Rain" makes for a great album. The story is like a 1930's backstage musical brought up to date, the dialogue is cliché-ridden, while the acting looks as if it's everyone's first try-out (which it more or less is). What saves it is Prince's blockbusting soundtrack of great songs, most of which are played in full, which helpfully reduces the acting time for everyone. Elsewhere it's ridiculously sexist, the women in it variously getting thrown into a dumper like yesterday's trash, slapped about by the men and requiring to wear full pancake make-up at all times and of course appear half-naked most of the time.

Prince himself gets to run around on his motorbike a lot and of course perform his songs so he doesn't have to do much other than make big doe-eyes at key moments and speak his words one line at a time. Morris Day is better as his nattily-dressed rival (in music and for the girl), but underneath he's still a stereotypical chauvinist and Appollonia as the love interest gets to sing a little, cry a little and take off her clothes a lot.

What little humour there is, is forced and banal, none more so than an excruciatingly unfunny sub-Abbott and Costello "Who-dat" exchange between Day and his gopher over a password. In its favour though the presentation of all the songs is crisp and dynamic as you'd expect in the MTV age. Prince, naturally and even Day are fine musical performers, although Day's songs with his group The Time are noticeably inferior to Prince's group the Revolution's - you just don't buy the club-owner's ultimatum to "The Kid" to up his game or lose the gig because up until then his material and performances have been superb.

Which brings me to the music, which in Prince's case is absolutely brilliant throughout. Not for nothing did the soundtrack stay at the top of the US charts for a "Thriller"-challenging 24 weeks. Each song gets a different,imaginative, live-interpretation and the man himself is as we all know a sensational performer, dancer and lip-syncher too! As you'd expect there's a big climax, where the self-obsessed Kid reaches out by for once selflessly performing Wendy and Lisa's song (in reality his own), the title number, partly to expiate his pain over his family strife and also, naturally to win the girl, but the music is so good and the staging so strong that you believe it and all the 'happy ever after" boxes it ticks as it goes.

Which is pretty much the story of the film and it wouldn't be the first "musical" where the songs carried the movie, but there were rarely songs as good as these doing the job.

Not terribly different from many of the 1930s-era "backstage musicals," Purple Rain sports a contrived plotline that sees Prince (in the film referred to only as The Kid) battling rival musician Morris Day for the affections of new-in-town beauty Apollonia and a shot at stardom through a secure spot on the bill at legendary Minneapolis club First Avenue. A secondary narrative thread concerns The Kid's violent home life and his attempts to protect his mother from his raging, abusive father. Anyone looking for nuance and subtlety won't find it in the acting or the direction, but Prince's stage presence is commanding, and the musical numbers are electrifying. The Academy Award winning song score (irrefutably one of the best rock albums of the 1980s) and Prince's enigmatic, magnetic personality are undoubtedly the chief components in Purple Rain's sturdy cult, but for viewers of the right age, the youthful angst, flip attitude, and bold sexuality of the film will prove to be irresistibly attractive.