One Paragraph Movie Review: The Color Purple

Eighty-sixth film: The Colour Purple. Whenever I watch this dumb stupid excellent movie I am utterly ruined, made worse by the knowledge that the kind of crying I do every single time is not even close to my prettiest. Whoopi Goldberg, despite only saying a maximum of a hundred words over the full three and a half hours, is perfection, and ‘Miss Celie’s Blues’ has been one of my favourite songs for about thirty years and still gives me the minor chord shivers. Spielberg only makes himself obvious during a couple of short spells of extremely heavy-handed schmaltz and sentimentality (just leave the throwing-chocolate-coins-off-the-back-of-the-train bit out altogether mate), but otherwise this thing looks incredible, sounds sublime, and has the word ‘folkspants’ in it. A smidge under five little kids saying “It’s gonna rain on your head” out of five.