Review of Purple Rain

A review of the film Purple Rain I wrote a couple of years ago

Purple Rain (1984)

Review by Brendan Speers

Purple Rain, released in 1984 (appropriately enough, I suppose) is truly a child of its era. Very rarely is a movie so entrenched in it’s own cultural milieu. While it would be easy to simply mock the time in which the film takes place, doing so would be doing this film a great disservice, one that is perhaps the most enjoyable 111 minutes you’ll spend hating yourself.

The structure of the film itself is centered on Prince (whose character is called The Kid for some unfathomable reason) performing a collection of the songs from the titular album on stage before an adoring audience (although at times the various characters describe the audience as apathetic and hating them). It’s essentially an excuse to watch Prince gyrate around on stage for half an hour. There are worse ways to spend your time, sure, but to get to the gold you have to slog through 80 minutes of completely incomprehensible trash.

The main storyline (or as close to one this film has) follows the Kid and Apollonia (played with incompetent aplomb by Apollonia Kotero, who apparently had too much trouble learning another name for this film) simply confusing romance. The basic story goes something like this: Boy meets girl, girl crushes on boy, boy acts like a jackass, girl buys him a guitar, boy beats her, girl almost gets raped, boy tries to rape her and beats her some more, girl and boy embrace, having found true love.

Perhaps the story would make more sense if the two actors showed even the smallest hint of chemistry. In all of the romantic scenes between the two, Prince always seems vaguely confused and frightened (my reaction to most of this film), and Apollonia just pushing through the scene to the paycheck at the end.

In any case, Prince’s band (called The Revolution) is on the rocks, despite everyone loving them. Prince’s complete assholery seems to be pushing the band members apart; though this does not seem to have any lasting effect on the members or dampen their on stage chemistry whatsoever.. A rival manager (or their manager, the film is somewhat vague on this point) hires Apollonia and a bunch of girls to make a “sexy, but not dirty” girl band. They point out this line a couple of times, which was somewhat odd as their choice in showing that concept was throwing poor Apollonia (who had to get naked or near for most of the film) into the outfit Frank. N. Furter wore in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

There’s also a sub-plot involving the Kid’s abusive father, a failed musician, and how he’s a role model for him (at the end he dedicates his big finale song to him; the same guy who spent the rest of the film yelling at Prince or hitting his wife). To be honest, despite the hero worship of an abusive lunk head, this story is what brought the film closest to honest emotional resonance. It also provided the one plot point I didn’t predict before sitting down. Oh, aside from the whole Prince acting like a dick through the whole movie without going through any major character development, unless you count becoming slightly more of an asshole as character growth. What was with that?

Anyway, the movie meanders between the three storylines, occasionally throwing a subplot in for good measure, all culminating in a finale that doesn’t solve any of the problems, but they act like it does so that’s okay.

As much as the film is a whole mess of flaws tied together by a couple of stage performances, the movie is almost absurdly enjoyable. Not as a drama as it’s billed, naturally, but one nonetheless. If nothing else it serves as a decent anthropological piece on the mid-80’s.

The music though is what the film is truly about. If you ignore all the moments that don’t involve Prince either on stage or one of his compatriots farting around on a guitar or drum machine, the film is a solid piece of work. The live shows are shot competently, giving time not only to Prince, but some to the rest of the band and the audience. Even watched on a small TV screen the performances are electric and full of wild energy, something that must have been a treat to watch in a theatre filled with screaming teenage girls.

Aside from the actual performances the music is as confusing as the rest of the movie. Random guitar stings occur at moments where they are the least needed, giving an almost surreal feel to the whole piece, which might explain why none of the characters re-act logically to any of the situations they are thrust into.

What else is there to say? The film is a total mess; none of the characters show a single redeeming quality, the big dramatic action moment involves Prince running over a man in a giant purple motorcycle in one of the more subtle metaphors for gay sex, the fact that the movie ends on a freeze frame that, despite me staring at it for a good ten minutes, cannot possible decipher what exactly is supposed to be going on.

It’s oddly fitting that the penultimate image of the film is Prince’s oddly phallic guitar ejaculating all over the audience; it seems to be saying “I’m going to come all over your face and you will lap it up and enjoy every second of it”, and I’m rather afraid we all have.