Purple Rain- May 24th

Um, what? Wait ... what just ... what?!

We had heard that Purple Rain isn't exactly good, that it's more of an experience with amazing music than a coherent movie. But words could not have prepared us for what we saw. Nothing.

True, it's not what one would call a good movie. But it was a really fun experience, from the surreal acting to the ridiculous script. What surprised us was how old-fashioned the story is: there's a kid (called The Kid) who wants to be a STAR!, and his band at the nightclub (which is kind of like a cross between a punk club and The Brown Derby) is struggling to survive. There's some bug-eyed dude in a zoot suit with a rival band, and an unattainable mystery woman named Apollonia. It was sort of like a movie from the thirties with all the terrible makeup of the eighties. The script is one of the worst we've ever heard, especially for including this old chestnut of a line, when the naive Apollonia, new to the big, scary city, knocks over a waitress tray: "What are you, stupid or something? Why don't you watch where you're going?"

But you know all this, because we were apparently the last people on earth to see this movie. In Minnesota, people see Purple Rain shortly after birth, in that little room where all the babies are in bassinets. There's a screen hanging in every just-born baby room at every Minnesota hospital, with this movie on repeat, and babies' first words are either "Morris Day and The Time" or "Doves cry", and instead of saying they "went wee-wee", small children say they just "purified themselves in the water of Lake Minnetonka". It's true, look it up. No wait, don't.

The music, of course, is amazing. Dave's favorite Purple Rain song is "Take Me With U", Lizzie's two favorites are "When Doves Cry" and the title track (she couldn't narrow it down to just one). And seeing First Avenue in a movie is a surreal and exciting experience, especially since so much of it is unchanged - except for the garish neon lights hanging down from the ceiling.

All in all, we are very glad we finally saw this movie. We just don't really understand why it exists in the first place.