Publication: New York Daily News [US]
Date: July 27, 1984
Section:
Page Number(s):
Length:
Title: "Prince's 'Purple' Reign"
Written By: David Hinkley

(Rate: * * * )

At the core of "Purple Rain" lies a morality tale about a selfish kid who is opended up by love - a tale so heart - warming it could have been lifted straight from "Andy Hardy Gets A Girlfriend."

Wrapped in the flashy music and glittering, obsessive presence of rock singer Prince, however, the tale looks alot different, and while there are flaws, those differences are much for the better. On one level, this movie is simply designed to make Prince a bigger star. It should succeed. On another, it sets an even tougher goal: to be an intelligent, multidimmensional movie about rock music and a rock musician. It doesn't do badly there either.

Prince plays a rock singer (refered to as "The Kid") whose family situation - his ex-musician father abuses his restless mother - causes him to withdraw into a semi-fantasy world in his basement. This isn't as simpathetic as it sounds - The kid is arrogant and self-centered, traits which serve him badly when he meets Apollonia, who wants to be both a star and his woman.

He's destroying both his career and the relationship when his family takes a sudden tragic turn, providing the jolt that inspires him to triumph on stage and reclaim Apollonia from the inept clutches of his rival, Morris Day.

That wraps up the plot, but not the movie. The last 10 minutes are concert footage wherein Prince is no longer The Kid, but himself, at the top of his game. It is both a tour de force and a street-style challenge,the cinematic equivalent of break-dancing or playing the dozens; its Prince sayng he's the best and if anyone doubts it including Michael Jackson, let him prove otherwise.

Needless to say, Prince's character permeates "Purple Rain." The camera lingers long enough and often enough on his face and body so the word "Stallone" occasionally comes to mind, and he can curl his lip into the best little sneer since Elvis.

In one early scene,when The Kid and Apollonia have just met, he takes her to a lake, where she asks if he will help her career. No, he says. Why not, she says. She couldn'd pass the rites of initiation, he says. And what are those, she says. Well, first, he says, she has to be purified in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. He sneers. She takes off her clothes and jumps into the lake, then staggers out, shivering, gasping and looking for a nod of approval. Prince shakes his head. Why not, she cries. "Because," he replies with another sneer, "that ain't Lake Minnetonka."

Nice guy, eh? Fortunately, Apollonia gets her dignity back fast enough so that 1) we don't feel guilty for laughing, and 2) Prince has let us know that he isn't using the other character purely as foils for his sneer.

Morris Day, for instance, plays Prince's rival as a cross between Snidley Whiplash and Groucho Marx, and while this sometimes gets a little too campy, it's lots of fun; he steals half a dozen scenes by ending up on a trash heap or spilling a drink in a girls lap as he starts his big pitch.

On a more serious note, Clarence Williams III is brilliant as Prince's father, a man seething with frusteration, anger and love/hate; several short confrontations between father and son, where Williams is being visably consumed by his own rage and Prince sees his fathers image in himself, are by far the movie's most powerful scenes.

On the negative side,the movie is painfully at ease with its female characters, who are alternately abused and worshipped and whose primary virtue is smiling through the pain. Even the terribly appealing Apollonia spends more time peeling down to black lingerie for her men than facing her own life.

Also, he love scenes with Prince are both brief and, for him, apparently uncomfortable, which may help explain why The Kid, like his father before him, places his woman on a pedestal:He loves her, he hates her, he'd die for her, he'd kill her, and in the end, he doesn't know what else to do with her.

That's a miserably commom male view, of course, and its exploration here is one reason "Purple Rain" is several cuts above the average rock 'n' roll B-movie. Beyond that, the music works nicely with the script,the camera work is beautiful, and if the jury is still out on Prince's full acting potential, he 's definitely convincing as a neurotic young rock star.