I first saw Purple Rain in about 1987, during a period when girlfriend Kathy and I were renting movies about four times a week. She loved the movie at the time, but I think she would agree that it has aged poorly.
Purple Rain is an attempted fusion of a concert movie with a biopic. The concert part works great, but the plot? I wonder if the plot was needed at all. Maybe it was a studio formula that said, “you have to have a plot. It can’t just be a concert.”
The biggest flaw in the plot is when the manager and his ilk are talking about The Kid not having the sound any more and needs to be replaced. Truth: if you saw a show half as good as The Revolution’s show in this movie, you would simultaneously cum and shit your pants, then need hospitalization to have your smile removed.
Other thoughts…
The “girl show” Morris puts together with Apollonia 6 isn’t sexy it all. It’s clumsy and unmusical.
If it was Prince’s intention to spell out to us what a bastard and egomaniac he was in real life, well done.
The music, though not performed live for the film, was mic’d and mixed to have a concert sound to it.
On my second watch-through this week, it dawned on me that much of the bad acting is due to the rotten script. “It’s all I dream about. What about you? What do you dream about?” It feels like it came out of my tenth grade journal.
In conclusion, I find this movie poorly-written and filmed, but the concert footage is as good as the album. When I watch again, I will fast-forward through all the dialog to get to the performances.
Love this review. Love the line about responding to a band as good as The Revolution. So dumb that it was implied in this film that they weren’t any good. I suppose they just had to have an underdog aspect to the “story.” In short, the film is bad, the record is great.
Have you ever seen U2’s “Rattle & Hum”?