Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Color Purple’ on Max, in Which Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks Shine In An Important, Yet Familiar, Story

The Color Purple (now streaming on Max, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) marks stage four of this story’s progress through the pop-cultural zeitgeist machine. Alice Walker’s 1982 novel became a 1985 Steven Spielberg film, which became a 2005 Broadway musical, which became a 2023 musical film. (Is a video game adaptation next?) So it’s not the same old thing – not quite, anyway. Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule, who helmed Beyonce’s Black is King, keeps the core story intact, and works with an extraordinary cast including American Idol vet Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, the freshly Oscar-nominated Danielle Brooks and Colman Domingo (also a current Oscar nominee, albeit for Rustin). The result doesn’t strike one as being wholly necessary, but that may be beside the point, considering the heart and artistry Bazawule shows here.

THE COLOR PURPLE (2023): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s Sunday morning on the Georgia Coast, 1909. As folks gather for church, they sing ‘Mysterious Ways,’ directly referencing, of course, how the Lord tends to work. And you might be questioning why He treats young Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) so poorly. She’s a teenager, pregnant by her monster of a father, who gives the baby away – and it isn’t the first time this has happened. Then he gives Celie away, to the similarly cruel Mister (Domingo), who “takes her hand” but never formally marries her, since all he wants is someone to take care of his three kids and clean the house and cook dinner and be subject to his physical, psychological and sexual abuse. He seems to love nothing, save for Shug Avery (Henson), a famous blues singer he could never pin down and marry, and still pines for; she’s a “loose woman,” see, which is coded language for a woman who does what she wants and sleeps with who she wants. Shug is the opposite of Celie, who’s been raised to never understand how she could take control of her own life.

Celie’s only respite is her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey of The Little Mermaid remake). They’ve endured so much together, and are inseparable. Escaping their awful father, Nettie moves in with Celie and Mister, but when she rebuffs Mister’s advances, he throws her out into the mud and rain. As Mister’s shotgun blasts zing over her head, Nettie promises to write to Celie, no matter where she ends up. And that leaves Celie isolated, just as Mister prefers. His most cruel act may be intercepting Nettie’s letters and hiding them from Celie, who yearns for any word from her dear sister.

Years melt by. It’s 1917 now, and the adult Celie is played by Barrino. A spark of inspiration arrives to brighten her misery: Mister’s son Harpo (Corey Hawkins) introduces her to his fiancee Sofia (Brooks), who absolutely will not allow Harpo to be like his domineering father. Mister’s response to Sofia is what in tarnation, and boy, she’s got tarnation to spare, so much tarnation. Her song goes “Hell No!”, with much emphasis on that exclamation point. By 1922, Shug comes back to town, to sing at the juke joint Harpo opened in his house after Sofia told him to go to hell and L-E-F-T his sorry ass. Shug is another port in the storm for poor battered Celie, who could care less that Mister resumes romancing his old flame – he’s less abusive when Shug’s around, and on top of that, she ends up being a dear friend to Celie, who needs kindness like a wilted flower needs water. Shug isn’t the type to stay for very long, though, and she departs. But Shug and Sofia’s rebellious and liberated spirits hover over Celie. Now it’s 1930, and 1936, and 1945. Will those spirits ever inspire Celie to break the shackles of her domestic servitude? 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hairspray and Mean Girls have experienced a similar pop-cultural evolution, from movie to stage musical to movie musical.

Performance Worth Watching: Brooks, Barrino and Henson – the former two being veterans of the Color Purple Broadway production – are the heart and soul of the movie. They all likely warranted Oscar consideration, but it’s clear why Brooks nabbed a 2024 Best Supporting Actress nomination, since she makes the absolute most of her screentime, and vigorously steals every scene she’s in.

Memorable Dialogue: Sofia aggressively confronts Mister about her intention to marry Harpo: “I come here outta respec-t. But if there ain’t none to get, there sure ain’t none to give,” she spits, Brooks hammering that “t” like a burly carpenter driving a two-inch nail into a board with one mighty stroke.

Sex and Skin: The miserable sounds of Mister having his way with Celie, out of frame – and maintaining the PG-13 rating that Spielberg established in the original film. Notably, none of the Color Purple adaptations have depicted the relatively graphic depictions of sex and violence that earned Walker’s novel the status of the American Library Association’s list of most frequently challenged books.

Our Take: This, the fourth iteration of The Color Purple, inevitably leads to the question: Why? Especially another sanitized-for-PG-13 version of it? Of course, there’s the cynical notion that studios and distributors can justify profiting from it by asserting that it’s “for a new generation” that theoretically doesn’t know who the ubiquitous Whoopi Goldberg is (and she’s acknowledged for her breakout role with a bit part). But creatively speaking, the only thing that can justify the movie’s existence is execution – and there’s little question that Bazawule and his inspired cast are up to the task. 

The film leans heavily on Barrino’s strong characterization; subtlety is key to the performance, and she allows Celie to change slowly and steadily, without any sudden heel-turns or overwrought revelations that might undermine the harsh, pragmatic realities of the character’s emotional life. Barrino wisely underplays, allowing Henson and Brooks to swoop in and add color and verve to the narrative; their characters are women who fight the good fight, and if they don’t necessarily function without dynamic contrast with Celie’s timid nature, they nevertheless come to life as three-dimensional characters instead of literary constructs. Neither Henson nor Brooks is a wrecking ball undermining Barrino’s work – until the inevitable artificiality of musical performance demands it, and when that happens, all bets are off, and we find ourselves wildly entertained (especially when all three actresses come together in the third act to perform “Miss Celie’s Pants”).

Bazawule’s fantastical approach to some of the musical sequences – one fashions Shug and Celie as duetting film stars on a movie-within-the-movie set that shifts from black and white to color, another puts them on a giant rotating gramophone turntable – aim to impress, and they’re memorable enough. But his quieter compositions end up being more meaningful: Pause for a a moment to consider a low-angle shot of Celie and Nettie joyfully walking in the golden Georgia sunlight, which renders Nettie’s hat a halo around her head; it also resembles the rings around Saturn, appropriately, as Nettie’s importance to her demure sister is absolutely planetary. A similar aesthetic fuels the film’s final sequence, underscoring the insistent subtext that there’s love in kindness, forgiveness and togetherness. Sometimes, the movie struggles to marry its big-musical extravaganzaism with the seriousness of the subject matter, resulting in a noticeably uneven tone. Although we can nitpick this version of The Color Purple, there’s no denying its spirit. 

Our Call: Broadstroked emotions are so often a stumbling block in musicals – but that’s not really an issue with this frequently moving version of The Color Purple. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.