More than just an extended music video.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 6, 2025

Prince was always a showman and Purple Rain brought that side of him to a whole new level.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 26, 2024

…a good example of how talent can flatter to deceive…

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 17, 2023

I recommend it as a piece of 80s pop culture with some great music and corny romance. At the very least check out the soundtrack. It's legendary!

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 16, 2022

Not much about Purple Rain should work - and yet everything does.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 28, 2020

Transcendent music can cover a multitude of sins...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 26, 2020

Purple Rain became a generational manifesto, while providing the largest megaphone yet for one of the greatest geniuses in pop music.

| Nov 28, 2019

Perhaps the grossly simplistic and unsubtle misogyny in young people's movies and videos is less damaging than polished acting would be.

| Aug 21, 2019

The performances and score take it to another level, and as absurd as he is, Morris Day is, in a way, the glue holding this thing together...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2019

The live performances are dope...even The Time! However, the treatment of women was a bit abysmal, though at the time it was acceptable...the movie itself is entertaining.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2019

At once atrocious and awesome, featuring musical performances so sublime you instantly forgive that the rest is so ridiculous.

| May 30, 2019

Even those who aren't Prince fans are likely to be captivated by its energy, enamored with its simple, often poignant storyline.

| Aug 7, 2018

Catharsis on the cheap; there's no reason to accept the pretense that the hero has suffered much and changed for the better unless you're predisposed to get swoony over Prince himself.

| Apr 23, 2018

The film is a love letter to collaboration, to passion, and to the power of music: this is Prince's legacy, brought to life nowhere more memorably than in Purple Rain.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 11, 2017

As a debut and a savvy statement of personal enterprise, Purple Rain is quite an accomplishment. As a film, moreover, it is precisely the sort of vehicle one would have wished for Elvis in his Hollywood heyday.

| Feb 22, 2017

[UPDATED 2024 4K + BLU-RAY REVIEW] The drama is clunky, the acting is awful more often than not, and the casual sexism simmers throughout. But whenever Prince takes the stage, the picture irresistibly exudes sex, sweat, and swagger in equal measure.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 8, 2016

Prince's rock musical-drama has lots of sex, profanity.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 28, 2016

A viewer's response to the movie will probably relate directly to how much the viewer likes Prince to begin with.

| Apr 21, 2016

The music is lively, loud, often powerful, sometimes raunchy, yet full of unexpected subtleties and nuances. The staging is frenetic but as perfect as the machines of the art can produce. This is first class music video.

| Apr 21, 2016

Rock star Prince makes an impressive feature film debut in Purple Rain, a rousing contemporary addition to the classic backstage musical genre.

| Apr 21, 2016