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The Color Purple Movie Review

The Color Purple is a 1985 period drama film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Danny Glover and Whoopi Goldberg. It’s an overly sentimental movie.

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“The jail you planned for me

is the one you’re gonna rot in“

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It follows a young African American girl named Celie Harris and it shows the problems black women faced during the early 20th century, including domestic violence, incest, pedophilia, poverty, racism, and sexism. What is interesting here is that domestic violence and sexism are emphasized the most, and I found that a great choice as black men can truly be terrible husbands and that needed to be portrayed for once on the big screen.

The movie is obviously important for featuring an all-black cast and for dealing so extensively on the plight of black women in particular. However, it was based on a book, and unfortunately it shows in every single frame here. The movie is overlong, dull, populated with way too many underutilized characters and simply concerned with way too many unnecessary details such as countless tedious singing sequences and many other unimportant little tidbits that did not need to have been included in the first place.

But my main issue with this movie is Spielberg’s emotional manipulation which is at full display here. This one features his worst tendencies as a director having in mind that many scenes are way too sentimental and the entire third act is difficult to bear how triumphant and manipulative it is.

The Color Purple excels the most in the acting performances. This is a great cast with everyone doing strong work. Donald Glover has never been this despicable, Margaret Avery is so good, and Oprah Winfrey proved here how good an actress she can actually be when/if she made an honest attempt. But the best one has to be Whoopi Goldberg.

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She would later on become a full-on comedy queen, but this is her early dramatic role, and she killed it out of the park. She’s believable in every instance and I wish she would have gotten an Oscar this year. The flick did receive its technical and acting nods, but no way did it deserve to be nominated for best film and screenplay.

The Color Purple looks great, it deals with some important issues and it’s superbly acted with Whoopi Goldberg being the standout player. However, it’s a badly adapted movie that is overly boring and long while the emotional manipulation is difficult to bear with the movie representing Spielberg’s worst tendencies as a filmmaker.