I find the dialogue mostly quite stilted in the movie, which perhaps illustrates Prince’s lack of input into the writing. I can’t imagine a songwriter would not have had the script flowing better, but some of the exchanges are so clunky it’s almost embarrassing, especially the scenes between The Kid’s mother and father. Apollonia’s parts are not so great either, dialogue-wise, and she’s no actress it has to be be said. Prince does what he does: moody and silent most of the time, coming across as slightly sulky, impatient, above it all. For me, he evinces far too much arrogance and confidence for someone who is struggling to make it, reflecting perhaps the real-world success of the man with his previous album and the soundtrack to this one, which he must have known was going to be huge. It does however make it hard to believe he’s a small-time musician trying to make it, and to be fair, I can kind of see where Jackson was less than impressed with his acting. This would definitely not be the start of a glittering career in Hollywood.
The star for me is Morris Day, whose humour and comic relief really make the movie. From completely failing to get the password in the scene where he and his minder discuss same, to his being unable to open the door of the car because of the child lock, and his casual “keep the change” to the waitress, followed by his urgent whisper to his minder “Go get my change!” The guy’s something of an undiscovered comedy genius.
Let’s be honest: this movie survives and pulled the audience in on Prince’s reputation alone, and I doubt too many who went to see it were blown away on leaving the theatre. It’s a decent movie, but just that. It fails to fall flat, as some had surely hoped, but it never rises above the level of ordinary semi-biopic. What saves it is of course the music, and the performance of Prince (when onstage), which can’t be questioned. But without his name, without the music, this movie would have sunk without a trace, or more likely never even seen the light of day.
I like the way the scene is handled when he’s being quizzed by the cops after his father has been shot. No words, no dialogue, a few gestures all to a backdrop of distorted music - maybe rimshots or guitar flanges or some damn thing - but it all gives the impression that though The Kid’s world is falling apart, the only way he can perceive it, handle it, understand it is through his music, and sort of like in the
Peanuts cartoons, where the adults’ voices are made by horns and make no sense to the listener, here The Kid seems to hear no real words, only the music in his head. It’s like he’s watching someone else go through this ordeal, like it’s nothing to do with him.
I think the ending ruins it to some degree. The terrible mix of song snippets that accompany the closing credits make it sound like a sampler for an album, when they could have just done, I don’t know, maybe a long instrumental version of “Purple Rain”?
Overall, I definitely didn’t see anything great in the movie, as I said above, and it’s only the music that saves it. But that being the case, it was a huge success. As you can see from the data above, it gave Warner back a ten-fold return on their investment, and even got an Academy Award for, to nobody’s surprise, the score. But let’s top and consider a moment. This is after all no ordinary movie. First, it’s the only one I’ve ever seen with almost no actors in it. Everyone here - with I think two exceptions, those of the Kid’s mother and father - is an amateur, and most are musicians. None of them have acted before; yes, they’re essentially mostly playing in the movie the role they do in real life, that of playing in a band, working the crowd and so on, but still, it’s impressive how well, as amateurs, they end up acting.
Second, this is a movie whose soundtrack, as it were, was released months before it was. The album isn’t even a soundtrack, really, not even a retrospective one. All of the music on it is Prince, nothing from The Time or Apollonia 6 or even the score from Michel Columbier, and more, none of even the incidental music played by Prince. Just the full songs, some of which don’t even get a full airing in the film. So it’s not a soundtrack, more “music from the motion picture”, and more, all of the music was composed for the movie. That happens with scores, sure, but they’re always instrumental. This is a somewhat unique situation, I feel, where the songs were written specifically for the movie, but the album on which they appear was released first.
So there needs to be credit given, certainly, for a bunch of newcomers to acting who don’t make a total mess of the movie. And yet, this is only the second time I’ve watched it, and I sincerely doubt there’ll be a third.
But who cares what I think? What do I know?
Purple Rain was a hit - a blockbuster, which had knocked summer smash
Ghostbusters off the top, grossing over seven million on its opening night, and certainly vindicated Prince’s belief in himself. He was finally a true superstar.
He greeted his success with a characteristic shrug and was pessimistic. “We looked around and I knew we were lost,” Prince told an interviewer. “There was no place to go but down. You can never satisfy the need after that.”
But he was wrong.
He would spend the next twenty years confirming just how wrong he was.