Revisiting PURPLE RAIN On The Big Screen (Thanks To Cool Classics @ The Colony)

As I reported a few posts back (“Hey I Finally Saw... ERASERHEAD!” 8/3/08) The Colony Theatre in North Raleigh has been showing a series of what they call “cool classics”. In the last few years they've shown 35 MM prints of modern movie milestones like THE BIG LEBOWSKI and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE as well as guilty pleasures such as THE GOONIES and GREASE. I was pleased as punch to see that Prince’s MTV inspired musical PURPLE RAIN was on the calender this month. I had seen the film before but on video a long time ago so the time is right to have a big screen re-appraisal and here it is:

PURPLE RAIN (Dir. Albert Magnoli, 1984)

Released almost 25 years ago, the theatrical debut of Minnesota’s funky wunderkind Prince defines “dated” - it’s washed in synthesizer sound, bathed in neon-lit smoke, and plods with drum machine timing. Like an Elvis or Tab Hunter vehicle reshaped for the 80’s, Prince plays “The Kid” a teased-haired guitar-strangling stage-hopping diva who one night playing at Minneapolis’ legendary 1st Avenue falls for a fresh off the bus, or more accurately fresh off running from paying a cabbie, sexy singing sensation named Apollonia. The Kid’s competitor Morris Day as himself (everybody but Prince it seems goes by their own name) also eyes Apollonia but she is taken for a ride literally by The Kid on his motorcycle across the countryside montage-style while “The Beautiful Ones” serenades them from one of the biggest selling soundtracks of all time. When on the verge of skinning dipping, Apollonia asks The Kid: “And you...what do you dream of?”, I quipped to my friend Jill that his answer should be - “better acting”.

This was the right way in which to view this movie with a plot so bare boned yet still extremely cliche ridden it’s ripe for ridicule. When the music isn’t blaring and the dance rhythms die down the players engage in melodrama with far from fleshed out conflicts. Prince’s, sorry The Kid’s parents (Clarence Williams III & Olga Karlotas) fight it out on the homefront as his audiences are dropping off at the club because of his risky experimentation (which makes for one of the soundtracks most excitably ambitious numbers “Computer Blue”). Apollonia seems to offer some sexy solace from The Kid’s stress but when she joins Morris’s band he goes ballistic and strikes her, which is crudely brushed off as part of his moody personality - and this is just after he gives him a lavish guitar as a gift! Moody and brooding seems to be the only notes Prince can or wants to play as an actor here. When The Kid steals Apollonia from a drunk Morris Day once again on his motorcycle in a dark alley, Day yells: “Motherfucker! You long-haired faggot!”, my friend Jill chimed in with “that may be the best line of the whole movie...he sounded like he really meant it!” I am inclined to agree though I think my favorite line was Day to Apollonia earlier in the film: “Your lips would make a lollipop too happy.”

With this MST3K-like riffing on the film debut of the artist formerly known as Prince who became an unpronounceable symbol but now is known as Prince again we could best enjoy the so called plot elements between the music video and concert sequences that really are this movie’s calling cards. The charismatic and extremely amusing Morris Day, who got some enthusiastic shout-outs at the screening we attended, appears to be the most fully rounded character but thats most likely from what he brings to the role and not whats in the screenplay which if I found out that there was more than one draft of I’d be royally shocked.

Somehow despite the hackneyed storyline, the atrocious acting, and time-worn editing, PURPLE RAIN shines stronger than other so called cult classics of the same era largely because of its stellar soundtrack. The climatic unveiling of the title song, with a melody and backbeat written in the film (but not in real life) by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman of the Revolution, which annihilates the crowd at 1st Avenue as well as Day and his cronies is wondrous amped-up high gloss camp successfully disguised as devastating drama. To watch it and not smile seems as sinful as Prince’s usual song subject matter and just as naughty too.

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TROPIC THUNDER (Dir. Ben Stiller, 2008)

The comedy fortunes of Ben Stiller have fallen a bit lately (THE HEARTBREAK KID, anyone?) so it’s a certainly a treat to see him in the full-on mockery mode that worked so well in ZOOLANDER taking on the industry that made him famous and bringing along a crew of above par talent (including Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Steve Coogan, Nick Nolte, and one unrecognizable Tom Cruise who buys back a huge chunk of street cred here). Unless you’ve been locked in a sound proof vault with no windows over the last few weeks you know that this movie features A) Robert Downey Jr. in black face as an Australian Academy Award winner who is playing a jive talking African American. B) A group of actors (Stiller, Downey Jr., Jay Barochel, and Bradon T. Jackson) trying to achieve A-List status making a Vietnam war picture but get stranded in the jungle and have to become real soldiers in order to fight their way out a la ¡THREE AMIGOS! and GALAXY QUEST. C) The before mentioned Tom Cruise as a bald pudgy foul-mouthed executive who nearly walks off, that is hip-hop dances off with the whole film.

Steve Coogan as the frustrated frizzy-haired film maker of what Access Hollywood calls: “the most expensive war movie never made” (a line likely drawn from pop culture punditry response to Francis Ford Coppola’s extremely over schedule production back in the late 70’s: “Apocalypse When?”) decides to deposit the actors into the jungle with only a map and a script and he’ll film them with hidden cameras and rigged explosives. This plan immediately derails, in a crude but hilarious moment I won’t spoil, and they run up against a heavily armed gang called Flaming Dragon who have a heroin producing work camp. They capture Stiller and hold him for ransom once the leader (fiercely played by child actor Brandon Soo Hoo) recognizes the actor from his career damaging flop “Simple Jack”. Meanwhile Stiller’s hotshot agent, Matthew McConaughey in chilled “alright, alright” mode, fights Cruise’s heartless exec character for TiVo to be contractually provided for his client before realizing the severity of the situation. The real cause of the botched conflict is a grizzled Nick Nolte as the author of the book “Tropic Thunder” and the inspiration for Coogan’s “Guerilla style” tactics. Nolte and explosive expert Danny McBride (fresh off almost stealing PINEAPPLE EXPRESS) also get captured by the Dragon gang and all the pieces are in line for a ginormous and outrageous shoot-em-up finale with every player getting his shot at glory.

Before the film proper of TROPIC THUNDER begins (before the Dream Works logo even hits the screen that is) there are funny fake trailers that introduce us to the quartet of protagonists. They set us up to embrace Stiller as a high grossing action star in “Scorcher 6” - an obvious dig at big overblown unnecessary franchises, Black as a pandering fart joke machine comic superstar in “The Fatties: Fart 2” - yep, a beyond obvious swipe at Eddie Murphy’s sad state of fat suit affairs, an ad spoof featuring Jackson as an “Booty Sweat” energy drink hawking rapper, and most amusing “Satan’s Alley”, complete with a FOX Searchlight logo announcing it as a prestige picture, giving us Downey Jr. and Tobey Macguire (who once shared a bed together in WONDER BOYS) as monks in a forbidden homosexual relationship. These and the many other digs at Hollywood cookie-cutter commerciality are the heart of this overblown but surprisingly not obnoxious comedy. The in-your-face-ness of the self aware atmosphere keep it from having to live or die joke to joke. Downey Jr. is undoubtedly the best part of this project, his unflinching take on Russell Crowe-esque maniacal method acting results in many of the movies biggest laughs like for one: “Huh! What do you mean ‘You People?’” Downey Jr. angrily asks Stiller at a stressful juncture. Jackson, who is authentically African American says, with an even angrier tone to Downey Jr., “What do you mean ‘You People?’”

For all its over-the top silliness TROPIC THUNDER has a great gritty widescreen look; it has shots that look exactly like the excess-riden war epics its parodying like, of course, APOCALYPSE NOW and PLATOON - the poster of which Stiller tries to imitate, with his pumped up arms raised to the sky, every 10 minutes it seems. I experienced uncountable successions of giggles but not all out guffaws during this movie. It never lagged on the laughs but they’re of the small smirking kind for the most part. Still, it noisily announces itself as the mega comedy you cant ignore with performances that will be talked about for years and lines that will be endlessly quoted I predict. I have to say that Stiller himself as an actor is not doing anything we haven’t seen before - with his wide eyed pathos and tampered ego posturing his character is basically Derek Zoolander as if he were an action star and not a super model. But as a director and writer, Stiller is doing something I want to see more of, that is making comedies with a wide scope of inspired tangents and most importantly casts full of talented energized folk who aren’t afraid to make wicked fun of themselves while taking crazy chances too.

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