OVP: Purple Rain (1984)

Film: Purple Rain (1984)
Stars: Prince, Apollonia Kotero, Morris Day, Olga Karlatos, Clarence Williams III
Director: Albert Magnoli
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Original Song Score*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

A couple of confessions.  First off, as a lifelong Minnesotan (with a one-year sabbatical in New York), there is a small amount of shame in the fact that I have never seen Purple Rain.  I always felt that I should rectify this in a big way (maybe see a showing of it at Paisley Park or something), but last night in my monthly "Secret Movie Night" tradition, I randomly was assigned this particular picture so I guess seeing this movie less than 2 miles from Lake Minnetonka wasn't the worst way to finally catch Prince's magnum opus (and it was certainly thrilling to see the ways the city I've worked in for 11 years has changed since the 1980's).  Secondly, I am not a fan of cult movies.  This is a concept that largely escapes me-I don't go to midnight showings mostly because I don't stay up that late (I'm 34, and need sleep), but also because most cult or midnight movies are bad, and I don't understand the appeal of reveling in bad movies.  There are exceptions (Clue and Scott Pilgrim are both comic masterpieces, instantly quotable and insanely watchable), but by-and-large the sorts of films that appeal to the cult movie crowd I don't understand at all.  Purple Rain is one of these such movies, and since I was being forced to watch it through the Secret Movie night (and it got another OVP movie off of the list if nothing else), I wanted to underline this fact before you start getting irate at me for "not getting the movie"-I get it, I just don't like it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows the Kid (Prince), an aspiring young talent who appears nightly at the iconic First Avenue (in this regard I am a proper Minnesotan-I have definitely seen a show at First Avenue) and his romance with another aspiring young singer named Apollonia (Kotera), who is beautiful but isn't able to get her foot in the door of Minneapolis's club scene.  The Kid is stubborn, not seeing the value in the rest of his band's songwriting skills, and isn't as popular as some of the other First Avenue acts, particularly Morris (Day), who wants to take the Kid down and make Apollonia his own discovery/romance.  The film frequently segways into the Kid's violent home life, where his father (Williams) regularly beats his mother (Karlatos), an act that the Kid repeats in his relationship with Apollonia.  Eventually Apollonia does create a band with Morris, and nearly takes away the Kid's act at First Avenue until he realizes the error-of-his-ways, uses his bandmate's song, and performs "Purple Rain" to an adoring crowd.

The film is, and I don't want to underscore this, really bad.  The acting is appalling.  Prince can get away with some of the cheesy and coy line readings because he's a legendarily shy rock god (the "purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka" line actually worked for me, for the record, somewhat out of Minnesota pride but also because Prince is strange enough to be a character who would actually say this sentence), but the rest of the cast doesn't have such luck.  Kotera deserved her Razzie nomination for her work here, as her line readings are stiff and the kind of thing that an audience will break out laughing to even when it's not intended to be funny; Day and Williams aren't much better on this front.  The movie's politics have aged so heinously that one has to assume they weren't particularly appropriate even in the 1980's.  The Kid's mirroring of his father's abusive behavior to Apollonia and then having her forgive him in the end (without him even truly apologizing) is an appallingly sexist message to send to the audience, and I honestly thought about getting up and leaving the theater it was so gross the way the movie linked violence and sex in such a way.  The fact that the movie is a cult film sort of underlines why this is a portion of filmic culture I have never been able to get behind.

The movie's one redeeming factor is the concert scenes featuring Prince performing some of his best-loved music.  Here, the movie delivers which is why it's not getting one-star even if the "movie" portions of the film totally deserve it.  Prince, a vibrant live performer, is electric when he eventually gets to do the title song, in a way that I saw several people in the movie theater audience starting to randomly wave their hands in the air.  Each scene with Prince on the stage at First Avenue is magic-a treat for audiences and sweeps you up in what made him such a powerful presence in the music scene.  The film deserved its Razzie nominations, but the Oscar was probably worthwhile too-it's hard to imagine another musical from the 1980's that had such iconic hits.  But they're buried in a movie that is dated, stiff, and needlessly violent, and shouldn't be celebrated in any fashion, even ironically.