Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1984 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. Imagine a world where This is Spinal Tap and Repo Man hit theaters on the same day. That is the world of 1984.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly three dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1984 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out on the same day the films hit theaters in 1984 so that it is their true 35th anniversaries. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory.
This time around it’s July 27, 1984, and we’re off to see Purple Rain.
Purple Rain
Oof.
Can that be the whole review? No? Alright, fine. I’ll write more words.
I was super excited when I saw Purple Rain was next up on the list. It has probably been 20 years or more since I’ve seen it, and I love Prince, so this was going to be awesome. I remember when this came out that everyone praised it, thought his acting was amazing, the soundtrack was killer, and so on.
Part of all this is correct.
There is no denying the soundtrack is amazing. And Prince’s performance as “The Kid” is truly worthy of praise. I would even say Morris Day’s performance was surprising.
Everything else about this movie is awful. Just simply awful.
Character motivations are threadbare and boiled down to just enormously broad strokes. And that is made even more painful when people simply can’t act. Prince put friends and longtime associates in this movie without a care if they could deliver a line, and most of them can’t.
And then comes the treatment of women, namely Appolonia. I get that it was a story of violence begets violence, and he was raised in an abusive home, but his anger, violence, and controlling nature towards Appolonia is just inexcusable. You don’t so much want to watch their relationship as take her to a shelter and get her away from The Kid.
Viewing it this many years later, it turns out it would have been much better off as a concert film and just ignored trying to tell any sort of story because all you ended up with is a dark, unpleasant cesspool of unlikeable characters.
1984 Movie Reviews will return on August 10 with Cloak & Dagger and Red Dawn!
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