Review of Purple Rain (1984) by Renovatia — 04 May 2019

A higher score than a mere a 5/10 I cannot give despite having enjoyed the movie; The movie displays every attribute you'd expect from a b-movie.

Prince tries to keep his gig in some establishment. He soon has to compete with Appolonia's group ("Sex Shooter") which has been recruited by Morris Day - who looks like a stereotypical negro clown pimp. Two more subplots include Appolonia being a potential love-interest of Prince, though this looked more like the main theme. The second sub-plot was Wendy & Lisa's role; The guitarist and the keyboard operator feel underappreciated. Prince never listens to their input by ignoring their tapes for example. Since the get-go of this subplot, at 1/3rd of the movie, it's clear W&L wrote the "Purple Rain" gig. Will Prince learn his lesson and play their song? And why would Prince learn his lesson? Stay till the end of the movie to find out.

Maybe a third sub-plot was the theme of Appolonia's naked body - a beautiful body, beautiful breasts. Completely unnecessary and the nudity scenes felt out of place, but (((Hollywood))) eyh.

It was interesting to see Prince putting all of his emotion in a certain song. Never seen it before. It was a mix of laughable and endearing. Maybe this is really him, which in that case I'd retract the "laughable" part. The Revolution didn't play really a role. From the glimpses of Prince's crew I'd say most of them are gay or something. Everybody had a tiny little role to play, but said Prince's crew. Do they lack that much charisma and talent? I wouldn't know.

Perhaps Wendy and Lisa were the only ones with talent at that time. One has to observe the little things as they don't get much acting time. Also notice how the under-appreciation theme of the movie turned out to be a real issue. That's why W&L left Prince and began their own group. Acting-wise Appolonia's was the worst. The nude scenes described why she was hired.

For die-hard Prince fans only.