After hearing how great the movie
The Color Purple was for the past 24 years I finally rented it. Guess what? It's not that great. And I'm not one of those habitual Spielberg-bashers at all, I think he's made tons of good movies, but I think he did fairly poor job directing this one. The biggest flaw by far was the film's uneasy marriage of gritty, disturbing drama with occasional bursts of cartoonish humor, but I also thought the presentation of the story in general was kind of scattershot.
On the positive side, it's by far the best performance of Whoopi Goldberg's career. Before watching this movie I honestly had no idea she could be that good of an actress when she wanted to.