There has probably never been a film more quintessentially of its time than Purple Rain.
Released 40 years ago on July 27, 1984, Prince’s semi-autobiographical movie was an undeniable hit. It earned $70million (£54.3m) at the box office – which was almost 10 times its production cost – and quickly became a cultural touchstone.
Purple Rain ultimately won an Academy Award for best original song score and is generally considered one of the greatest musical films ever – but has it stood the test of time after 40 years?
You can almost smell aqua net hairspray, sweat clinging to leather pants, and the burgeoning rise of Reaganomics as you watch the film.
But when Prince’s character (The Kid) open hand slaps love interest Appolonia, one is forced to wonder if Purple Rain is one thing (like acid wash denim) that’s best left behind in the 80s.
The story follows The Kid as he navigates an abusive home life and his music career in Minneapolis, Minnesota, soon meeting fellow musician Apollonia with whom he starts a love affair.
To say the film is misogynistic is to put it lightly: one of the earliest scenes in the film depicts The Kid’s rival, Morris, literally throwing a woman into a dumpster after standing her up for a date.
Things only get more troublesome from there. Morris and The Kid viciously fight over Apollonia throughout the film, while also insulting and abusing her.
The much-discussed slap in the face – which follows Apollonia telling The Kid she’s going to join Morris’s band – isn’t the last time The Kid physically attacks her. He later throws her to the ground when he finds out she’s consumed alcohol, which he forbids her from doing because of his own alcoholic father.
For fans looking at the film with fresh eyes, this isn’t forgivable.
Fifteen-year-old avid music fan Paige Judge – who discovered Prince via her dad’s vinyl collection – was thrilled when she learned that one of her new favourite ‘vintage albums’ (as she put it) had an accompanying film.
But when she finally sat down to watch it last year, she was horrified. ‘It was like hilariously bad, honestly. I mean the acting was bad, yeah, but also it was so sexist I couldn’t believe it,’ she told
She goes on to share that her father, who had last seen the film when it first came out in the 80s, was as surprised as she was: ‘He said it wasn’t how he remembered it at all, that he’d seriously loved it at the time and thought The Kid was a hero.’
When asked if the film has affected her view of Prince and his music, she thinks for a moment before saying, with some reticence, ‘Yeah, I kind of thought of him as this queer icon, like gender queer and everything. But it seems like he was saying abusing women is fine. I don’t know.’
Steve Murdoch, 63, who has been a Purple Rain fan since the beginning and seen the movie ‘countless times, every time it was on TV which used to be a lot,’ thinks that Purple Rain’s flaws are not only intentional, but deep.
‘Everybody knows Prince wasn’t saying that The Kid’s behaviour was okay, he was warning against that kind of thing,’ he says.
When asked what specifically led him to this conclusion, he struggles to answer, but later sends a text that reads: ‘The part at the end where Prince looks into the camera. That’s him saying, “Don’t end up like this.”‘
Indeed, it’s not impossible to interpret The Kid’s journey as a mirror image of his abusive father, who was once a rising musician himself until he succumbed to his explosive temper and alcoholic tendencies. Perhaps Prince and writer/director Albert Magnoli (who later became Prince’s manager) were attempting to use The Kid’s story as a cautionary tale about the dangers of ambition.
Or maybe they just slapped together a soap opera-style storyline and then filled it with some of the best music ever written, effectively voiding any complaints about the plot.
Self-identified Prince super fan Jonathan Stillman might have put it best, telling Metro: ‘It’s one of the worst movies ever, but in that way where you can’t get enough of it. I don’t know if we took it seriously at the time or not, but everyone loved it so much. That part was very serious. So I guess it doesn’t matter why we loved it.’
It’s worth noting that the brand of 80s camp the movie deals in may just not translate to modern audiences. The endless fog, simulated motorcycle rides, and caricatured over-the-top performances are representative of an era of excess and consumerism.
It’s a style and method of storytelling foreign to people used to the hyper-realism of A24 films or the squeaky clean good vs. evil of Marvel movies.
Maybe Purple Rain wasn’t trying to make a statement at all. Maybe it was just aiming to be as sexy and exciting as a cropped jacket with shoulder pads.
Moralising aside, the film is filled with drawn-out musical performances from Prince, all of which remain iconic and magnetic.
One Reddit user, BulljiveBots, responded to a question asking how the actual film itself is ‘if I was deaf’ (meaning – how is it aside from the great music?)
They summed it up beautifully, writing: ‘If you’re deaf, it’s terrible. Bad acting, goofy story, ridiculous melodrama. Prince’s presence and charisma carries the whole movie. If you’re not deaf, every few minutes an amazing song or song performance plays which makes you forget the bad movie it’s in. I’ve seen it 50 times.’
But another user, Killzark, doesn’t see things in the same light writing: ‘The movie is really mediocre and if it wasn’t for the soundtrack and over-the-top melodramatic 80s sh** nobody would even remember it.’
But lovers of the film know that the soundtrack and over-the-top melodramatic 80s sh** is the very ethos of Purple Rain – to evaluate it without these things would be like saying that The Godfather would be a bad film without all the stuff about the mafia.
Purple Rain remains iconic and worthwhile precisely for all of the ways it fails. The juxtaposition of Prince’s once-in-a-generation songwriting and stage presence with some of the cheesiest acting and plot points of all time is so absurd and disjointed, it can’t help but be utterly delightful, even after all this time.
Sure, it’s a misogynistic mess. But even those aspects are portrayed in a way that is so distant from realism that the chauvinism doubles back on itself, coming off as caricatured and intentionally silly.
Perhaps modern viewers should look at the film as an ‘extended music video,’ one that was always intended to establish a vibe, not portray an authentic human experience.
If Prince was anything, he was over the top in a way that often confused, fascinated, and delighted people – so why should his iconic film’s legacy be any easier to understand?