Film Review - The Color Purple (2024)

The Color Purple is not a remake of Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film but instead based on the Broadway Musical of the same name (though Spielberg and Amblin are producers on it as is Oprah Winfrey who along with Whoopi Goldberg came to prominence with the original film) and this time Fantasia Barrio stars as Celie who is forced to marry the abusive and hard driving Mr (Colman Domingo) but one day she meets the Blues singer Shug (Taraji P Henson) and Celie starts to think of better days ahead as well as possibly seeing her Sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) again.

This new version of Color Purple is a good film but its not without problems but before I delve into those I want to talk about what I do like:

- Firstly I did like the films musical numbers, they are well shot and edited and have a real verve to them and when they came on in the cinema I was tapping my feet to them for the most part though as the film goes on they do start to get in the way of the storytelling a little bit.

- And secondly I think this is a solid cast, Barrio steps into some big shoes taking over Goldberg in this role but she does very well here (even if at times she looked a little too much like Goldberg) as does Danielle Brooks who is very good as Sophia and again taking over another icon in Oprah Winfrey who could not be easy but she does very well, Corey Hawkins and Hally Bailey are good in their roles and also the films production design especially of the swamp house is good as well.

But there are two big issues that I had with this movie:

- The first of these is the films length, it goes for 141 minutes but it felt more like 161 minutes at times especially towards the end where you just want the film to not have another song and dance ballad but instead to wrap up its story so I can exercise my bottom and stop it from going numb sitting in my seat and long musicals are hit and miss for me as well, sometimes like Spielberg’s West Side Story which had a 156 minute length worked wonderfully for me but here I was bothered by the length more.

- And secondly the films more serious storytelling moments and the films vibrant musical numbers clashed for me in terms of the overall tone and more than once I kept thinking to myself “I wish I was watching the original instead” and this feeling is heightened by Colman’s performance as Mr because at times especially in the second half I kept thinking he was doing an imitation of Danny Glover who played Mr in the original film (and was cast as Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon afterwards) and Glover has a distinctive voice that it sounded like Colman was doing that instead of making the part more his own and that bothered me as well.

All that aside however the Color Purple is not a bad film at all it’s a good watch if tough at times but I would watch the Spielberg original instead if your not hugely into musicals as this is a musical through and through and it worked well enough for me that I enjoyed myself watching it, 3 out of 5.