Graffiti Bridge (1990)

Wonderfully offbeat film!

Lack of good storyline.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

What is worse, even this 1990's Prince's flick was a total disaster. No wonder both Madonna and Kim Bassinger turned it down. The so-called sequel to equally tasteless Purple Rain is a vanity project for Prince, empty from the start and nothing but a waste of effort, time, money and patience. Bad to the very marrow, it again shows how fragile and slick Prince was as an actor, how schematic the plot is, how languidly the story unveils. Yest another failure. D'oh, sorry

Billy has left the Glam Slam Club to both The Kid (Prince) and Morris Day. The Kid runs the club day-to-day but Morris wants to take it over. Morris also runs the rival Pandemonium Club and wants to control every club in the area. Glam Slam isn't doing so well and The Kid doesn't seem to care. Aura is a mysterious girl who often writes on a Graffiti Bridge in the park.This is the 'Batman & Robin' of 'Purple Rain'. The original Purple Rain has an indie charm to it and an amazing soundtrack. This sequel is a lot of flashy neon, Morris Day being a crazy villain, and a brooding Prince. The charm is almost all gone. There are a couple of passable songs but otherwise, it's a hopeless endeavor.

That's the question I was asking myself as I watched it. Now, I know that it is a pseudo-sequel to the much-better and more coherent Purple Rain and it showed, especially with all the motorcycle trips out to the "graffiti bridge" (very similar in appearance to some of the lake sequences in the previous movie). And Morris Day and the Time are around again. That's really where any comparision ends.Prince's character is hyped-up on spirituality (which of course, isn't popular with the club crowds in the film). But ever other spiritually-themed song is followed by one that is much more sexually-charged and with little if no connection to the theme the character is trying to get past. The phrase "in the Temple" is used way too often in way too many of the songs, and is often the only religious link in any of the tunes. This movie seems to reflect the quagmire that was inside Prince himself at the time...He was trying new things but very disjointedly. The New Power Generation had replaced the Revolution, and there are many occurences of the symbol that would become his name (at least early forms of it). The highlights of the film for me were the performances of Morris Day and the Time, Mavis Staples, George Clinton (even though he seemed to be performing a Prince tune instead of his own work) and the short dance number by Tevin Campbell.If you like Prince, take a gander at the film...just don't expect Purple Rain. If you don't like Prince, don't bother.

Where do you start? I would rather sit through a nonstop marathon of Madonna's movies; I would rather be chained to a stake and have to fight off a horde of ravenous crocodiles while watching Richard Simmons and 300 fat women sweating to the oldies; I would rather listen to a recording of Fran Drescher singing the aria from "The Barber of Seville" in SurroundSound than ever have to sit through this thing again. Absolutely everything about this film is absolutely awful. The ultimate vanity project. Even if you like his music, forcing yourself to submit to this boring, pretentious, disjointed tribute by an egomaniac to himself isn't worth it. Buy the album if you must. Avoid this steaming pile of offal at all costs.