• Rock star Prince plays a headstrong, vulnerable young musician known as “the kid.” He struggles with his own psyche and family pressures ofan alcoholic father who beats his mother. He sees his father’s madness infecting both his music and his own personal life.Running Time: 111 min. System Requirements: Interactive Menus Production Notes Soundtrack Remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1 Theatrical Tr

Take a richly-human story of survival and triumph, a now soundtrack by the hottest bands around and the startling presence and musicality of rock superstar Prince – the man who lived the music – and you’ve got what may be in Rolling Stone’s words “the smartest, most spiritually ambitious rock-’n'-roll movie ever made.” Winner of Grammy and Academy Awards for it’s pulsating song score, Purple Rain marks the electrifying movie debut of Prince as The Kid, a Minneapolis club musician as alienated as he is talented. The Kid struggles with a tumultuous home life and his own smoldering anger while taking refuge in his steamy love for sexy Apollonia Kotero. Prince and The Revolution scorch with “Let’s Go Crazy,” “I Would Die 4 U,” “When Doves Cry” and the title song. And “Purple Rain showers us with unexpected pleasures,” Stephan Schaefer wrote in US. “Musically it is a triumphant firestorm.”When Prince’s dazzling and dynamic Purple Rain (movie and soundtrack album) and the hypnotic hit single “When Doves Cry” exploded onto the pop-culture scene in 1984, it seemed there was nothing the purple one couldn’t do. The film is basically a feature-length music video, but no musician has ever had a better big-screen showcase for his many talents. The plot is really just a theme (about the son of an abusive father struggling not to continue the pattern) upon which to hang some of Prince’s most dazzling songs (including “Let’s Go Crazy” and the title tune), and some sizzling live-concert numbers. Apollonia Kotero is ravishing as the romantic interest, and Morris Day and the Time provide some terrific musical competition. Purple Rain is an essential artifact of the mid-’80s pop Zeitgeist. Prince took home an Oscar for the song score. –Jim Emerson

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