La couleur pourpre

This is a musical adaptation of the stage musical based on the book. After the 1985 classic film, the hurdle gets to be quite high. It is also part of the recent trend of surprise musicals. They are not pushing the fact that these are musicals and the less informed audience members are getting surprised. This has great actors doing all the skills. It is technically great. It looks great. The performers are working at top notch level. It is very choreographed stage musical and that may be the problem.

I am still unsettled on this idea. The subject matter is so dark that the musical genre takes away some of the needed grittiness. It's not only a musical. It's the old timey choreographed energetic dancing type. It is showy Broadway and that overwhelms the dark complex story. Yet others do it well, but I would suggest that they always do it better on the live stage. There is an artificiality to the production when it's on the screen. It can't help but feel fake.

The original film of The Color Purple was certainly not a musical with all the constant singing and dancing in the middle of scenes. It was far superior to this one. I would file this under movies that do not to be remade and definitely not turned into musicals. I found myself turned off repeatedly in the middle of a serious scene where hat everyone would bust into song and start dancing everywhere. The music and dancing ruined this film for me. It's a shame too because the actors and actresses were all excellent and would have done much better without the constant distraction of music and dancing routines. This is not a comedy. It's a serious drama. But it was hard to take it seriously with all the silliness in between the dramatic scenes. Sorry but I would NOT recommend this disappointment of a remake.

My Rating 6.5/10

I'm a as huge fan of Broadway musicals only a few transfer successfully when they are adapted to the cinema screen .

I didn't get to see the stage version of this musical so I can't comment except to say in my opinion this adaptation although brimming with a very talented cast didn't really work for me .

I read that 13 songs were cut from the original Broadway stage version so it can hardly be considered an authentic version of the Broadway musical .

The composer of the additional music for this movie Kris Bowers has added a few pleasant but forgettable songs .

I felt this version of the original story by Marsha Norman was disjointed missing the emotional aspect of the 1985 movie and that the songs in the movie interrupted the flow of the story.

It's the same story of a black Southern woman Celie struggling to find her identity after suffering abuse from her father and abusive husband over four decades .

Celie with the help of her sisters and an unexpected inheritance escape her abusive husband and is reunited with her stolen children.

I felt the emotional impact was trivialised or diminished a little by adding music and songs to the mix.

The ensemble cast is impressive headed by Fantasia Barrino as Celie the role that Whoopi Goldberg who has a cameo in this version received a Best Actress Oscar nomination in 1986. The role of Sophia played excellently in this version by Danielle Brooks also earned Oprah Winfrey an Oscar nomination in 1986 for her portrayal of Sophia.

Other impressive performances from Taraji P. Henson as the flamboyant Shug Avery and Colman Domingo as the menacing Mister helped make The Colour Purple entertaining for me .

Oprah Winfrey is co producer with Steven Spielberg who directed the 1986 version.

This version directed by Blitz Bazawule cost an estimated $USD 100,000,000 to bring to the screen .

The original 1986 version cost an estimated $15,000,000 and was a huge success grossing $ 98,500,000 it will be interesting to see how the musical film version performs at the box office.

The Colour Purple musical version for me was like attending an Evangelical Baptist revival meeting where sinners repent and are miraculously transformed ,it's a little too preachy for me.

I'll start by saying that several performances were REALLY good, particularly Shug and Sophia (hello, Oscar?). But the movie felt flat. I know this is a different version (from the Broadway show) and definitely not a remake of the Steven Spielberg film. And while the music was good, I found it distracting, inserted into the story rather than advancing the story like a musical should. The characters felt undeveloped and ultimately unresolved. We saw some of the brutality of Mister but not his cruelty. We saw kindness of Celie but not her true goodness. And finally the choreography. It was good, if this had been on stage. In the movie, the action of the story stops so the action of the dancing can begin. So it called attention to itself instead of, again, advancing the story without our noticing.

It's not a bad movie. It's just not really good.

It's certainly possible that the core story of The Colour Purple just doesn't do anything for me. Because I'm not a huge fan of Spielberg's movie either but at least I thought it was a consistent vision. It may have devolved into misery porn for me after a while but at least it was tonally consistent misery porn. That's not something I can say for this new movie because I can't remember the last time I felt this much tonal whiplash watching a film.

Because the choice to tell this story as a musical wasn't entirely successful for me. Because for as well produced and performed as these sequences are they are in constant clash with the overwhelmingly heinous actions taken against these characters. These women can go from experiencing physical, lawful and sexual abuse only for the filmmakers to jarringly cut to a highly choreographed, energetic musical sequence. It rarely feels smooth and it constantly makes the film feel as if it's at war with itself for what it wants to be.

Those sequences really are gorgeously produced and performed to their credit though as is the entire film. All though often to its detriment, there's energy through every single performance and shot in this film and I really appreciate that they didn't revert to the bare minimum of shot/reverse shot even for even simple dialogue scenes. But for as incredible as these performances are, character wise this script personally left a lot to be desired.

It makes sense that this main character is as passive as she is given the abuse she suffers but it took too long for her arc to come to fruition. Because the only time she ever takes any agency is through other characters. This might work for where she starts the film but it just robs the character of any real development. Supporting characters are constantly swooping in to make her important life choices for her, rather than having her actually receiving any growth of her own, by the time she finally starts making her own choices not only does it feel unearned but also far too late in the film to feel satisfying.

The resolution of her character arc might've been unearned but it pales in comparison to how these male abusers are treated. The husband characters played, admittedly very well, by Colman Domingo and Corey Hawkins are portrayed as abusive to quite honestly ridiculous levels. Domingo's character is basically just portrayed as evil with almost no nuance or depth and Hawkins is written as wholly ignorant in a way that could've made sense but the entire resolution to those characters totally fumbles their entire arcs. There are elements of generational trauma given but it's not explored nearly deeply enough to justify their actions.

The script makes them horrific abusers from almost their very introduction and in the third act the filmmakers have the gall to try and redeem them. Not only does it fall totally flat but I actually found it fairly insulting as a viewer. Forgiveness should have limits but at the very least it should make sense from a writing perspective. Nothing in the first two acts gives any sense that these characters deserve redemption, nor that any other character would forgive them, and it made a large part of the last third totally infuriating to watch.

The Colour Purple was a frustrating experience for me. I may not totally connect with this story but I had far too many issues from a writing perspective to give the film the benefit of the doubt. It is an extremely well produced version of a deeply flawed script. It's completely lacking in depth or nuance and it's totally eye rolling in how it depicts the trauma of it's characters. Musical's are totally capable of dealing with dark subject matters but it's all down to tone and it honestly felt like this script had no barring on how it wanted to portray this story.