UTCM is only as disappointing as what you expect from it. Critics and most everyone else hated it cause it wasn't Purple Rain 2.

My quick thoughts: This movie was a waste of the characters created in “Purple Rain”. A movie showing the perils of fame and fortune would have been more interesting.

The Kid is married to a Hollywood actress and spends more time on the Hollywood prowl than in the studio. After more than a few failed albums, production projects and movies, his record company is ready to move on to its newest pot of gold, which happens to be someone the Kid fired from his band (one of many).

The Time and Wendy & Lisa have formed a production company, Pandemonium Productions(think LaFace) and work with all of the who’s who in the record industry (I would use real musical acts). Billy’s bother (who managed the Kid after Billy died) has been stealing money and The Kid hits the skids. Tired of his self loathing and abusive behavior his Hollywood wife leaves him facing a future of living out his days as a has-been or fighting his way back to the top.

A “wake up” conversation with a coked out Jerome Benton opens the eyes of the Kid and he realizes how many folks he’s crapped on. His need for resolution leads him to Pandemonium Productions and a showdown battle with his younger rival.

Insert flames here -->

I liked the cartoony cinematography!
I liked the cheap looking sets!

I lay all the blame on Prince and his direction, story script and his god awful acting.
Compared to Prince, Rosie, George Clinton and everyone else looked like seasoned Broadway stars!

I have only seen this movie once, and try as I might, I still can’t erase this traumatic experience from my life.

Under The Cherry Moon is Citizen Kane compared to this.

Pair this movie with the tacky album cover, "Tick Tick Bang" and "The Latest Fashion" and you have the equivalent of enhanced interrogation techniques.

I would rather suffer 1000 Nicholas Cage movies than this, Prince’s self inflicted rape, this self inflicted defamation of character.

This is the mentality, this is the cheesy standards that he brought forward from this day and all through the 90's
[Edited 6/19/09 22:03pm]

Although I didn't like the set of the movie, an unrealistic set does not destroy a film. It can even add a unique visual effect to a movie, and at times, Graffiti Bridge is gorgeous like the stage set of SOTT, if a bit sterile.


What Graffiti Bridge needed , to me, was this:



1). If Prince is going to be the protagonist, the movie going audience (not just new power butt puppet fans) need a reason to care about him. In Pixar's "Finding Nemo", we care about Nemo because of the major loss at the beginning of the movie. Losing Nemo would make it all the more tragic, and added an emotional element to the story line. In Graffiti Bridge, even though the movie starts off with voice dialogue to his 'father', we're never given anymore real substance to that story line. Nor are does it give the character any true motivation. It's like a dead idea. Completely superfluous. The audience needs a reason to care.

2). If Aura is suppose to be his divine Muse, yet she's getting drunk with Morriss and his camp friends, then try to at least explain why she's so confusing. Plus, convey to us how they could possible develope an attraction towards each other cause the onscreen romance is almost as unbelievable as Micheal Jackson kissing Lisa Marie at the MTV Music Awards--the audience doesn't believe it. In Purple Rain, Appolonia's instant attraction to Prince could have been due to any number of motivations--love at first sight, Avarice, loneliness..anything.... and it played well into the bleak desperate quality of the movie. In Graffiti Bridge, you just get this really boring love interest that likes to read terrible poetry. By the time she dies, you almost wish they'd done it in slow motion, and I don't know about you guys--but I laugh my ass off at that scene.

3) If "Still Would Stand All Time" has enough power to turn the hearts of 'thugs' like Morriss Day , then at least show him as more than a one dimensional character preceding the final scene. Cause when they finally do their little 'hug', every non-Prince fan in the audience will be scratching their heads--and certainly all the straight ones brave enough to continue through the movie after the Tick Tick Bang performance will not buy the emotional conversion. You can't show one dimensional characters in a movie and at the last scene, reveal a softer side to them...it's too late at that point.

4) The battle of the bands : lawd. I mean, if Prince is trying to keep his club, we NEED to know why it is so important to him. What does he gain to lose? What are his options? I mean, it's just not believable. And in a movie like this, suspension of disbelief is required, but there's a point where it becomes silly.

5) The musical performances: Open the movie with something fierce. For fucks sake, Fiddler on the Roof opened with more 'umph'. If you're trying to recapture an audience (the American pop audience has an attention span of no more than 2 or 3 years), then 'wow' them. They're not going to be 'wow' by the plot--that's for sure.

6) It's too obvious in the scenes with Prince and Ingrid that he think's he's really cute. Whatever your opinions on his looks, when somebody is trying to act cute, it's not cute....it's annoying. His little pouty faces, etc. etc. simply weren't pullled off well. It was obvious he was playing it up for the camera, and when you can tell the actor is aware of the camera, it ruins the scene.

7) The movie felt like a hot ghetto mess version of Guys and Dolls but without Sinatra or Brando's stage presence. I'm not sure how he could have improved on it as I don't take issue with the set, but it didn't work with the type of movie he was making.

8) Add tension to the script. Give the audience a reason to care. Not just about the characters but the overall script.

9) During Purple Rain, Prince was 'cool'. Everybody loved him. He was everywhere. By the time Graffiti Bridge was released, Prince was no longer 'in'. Again, the movie could have given his career a bump if it had just been interesting.

Excellent post.

I would also add: eliminate the obvious and terribly executed comedy scenes. Nobody, but nobody found any of the forced comedy bits to be funny. The "hot pepper challenge" scene, Morris peeing on a tree after the explosion, the dueling banjos money countdown, and anything else which tried in vain to recapture the whimsy of PURPLE RAIN. Anytime a character attempted to do something comedic, it brought the movie to a dead halt and the audience just watched in embarassment over the contrived bits. It was just plain awful.

1) Like everyone said, NO STUDIO!!

2) Letting Ingrid Chavez as the love interest. Stop bad idea. Why? For one her acting wasn't good and two they should have continued Susan, I think that was her name, being the love interest and struggling to deal with Prince's emotional/mental state he was in. In other words, they should have developed Susan's character more instead of her getting fed up with Prince and leave him because it's pretty much emphasizing that fact that her character was meaningless.

3) The plot.... I'm seriously convinced that there was little to no plot at all and to this day, even after watching the movie twice and reading the plot online, I still don't get it. The problem is that Prince was trying too hard to make it something he himself envision but failed miserably because he didn't take the time to work and study with someone who has ACTUALLY directed a flim or even a scriptwriter in order to learn how to make a GOOD MOVIE. However, forget Prince as a director, get someone else with experience.

4) Dialogue.....worst than Purple Rain and Under the Cherry Moon put together..... NEXT

5) Another problem with this movie is that Prince was trying to put WAAAAYYYY too many Singers/Musicians..... he was giving them their spotlight ever five seconds that half the time I didn't even have time to adjust to the transitions from plot to song. In the end, it was nothing more than a hot mess.
Giive the audience a break before you go out of no where with crap.

6) Another thing, for a movie that had too much going on, despite the battle between Prince and Morris, the music, the love interest, his psychological state when things were wrong, etc, it was BOR-ING!!!

7) Lastly, Logic. I know that's saying lot considering Prince's state of mind and attitude has no true logic, but come on that's really no excuse. What I mean to say is that I don't know if I was either watching Purple Rain 2, or Inner-Conflict movie, or Romance, or Action , or hell a Musical. It's called confusion. Like I said before about adding too many things and having too much going on, you lose the audience's attention like that. At Least UTCM wasn't hard to understand . This was the major problem with the movie the fact that it was confusing and doesn't elaborate enough of what's going on, it's just telling me Prince was like "Fuck this bitch, I'm gonna put a bunch of shit together and not bother to edit it (yeah the editing flaws are more obivous than the precessor) and call it Graffiti Bridge aka Purple Rain 2." Again this movie never gave us,as the audience,a chance to understand what's going on and never gave us enough background on some of the character's to even feel some remorse for them (like Chavez's character's death, like a gave a damn )

Yes, I know I said alot but that's how I feel what should have been done to this movie.
[Edited 6/19/09 22:25pm]
[Edited 6/19/09 22:26pm]

blueautumn said:

Bullshiz. People knew it wasn't going to be PR 2. but when you have two straight guys walking around in satin jammies asking "Seriously, do you love me?.....then life is a parade, ya dig?", it's bad.

Sure, I love the movie actually. The first 60 minutes is pretty funny, and has some good moments.

Which do you think people hated more? The REAL Purple Rain 2, or UTCM? My vote is for the former.

First being a "Prince" album
1. "Can't Stop This Feeling I Got"
2. "New Power Generation"
3. "The Question of U"
5. "Elephants & Flowers"
6. "We Can Funk"
7. "Joy In Repetition"
8. "Tick, Tick, Bang"
9. "Thieves in the Temple"
10. "Still Would Stand All Time"
11. "New Power Generation part II"

I'm sorry for the confusion, when I say people thought it was gonna be Purple Rain 2, I wasn't meaning literally. Just in the wake of Purple Rain, I feel people were thrown off by a more "story" movie by him as opposed to music movie like PR.

As far as the, "two straight guys walking around in satin jammies asking "Seriously, do you love me?.....then life is a parade, ya dig?" I see your point, but I didn't take it seriously. I laughed my ass off! It was funny, If being a pimp was to be a cartoon, this is what I'd expect, very funny because, fo' real? Who does that?!?

You say, "The REAL Purple Rain 2". To me, it never happened. But, if you are referring to Graffiti Bridge I would totally agree with you.

And listen, I no more think Graffiti Bridge is a sequel to Purple Rain than SOTT is a sequel to Nightmare On Elm Street.

Never released it.

Or let Magnoli write another one and direct it. Prince proved in 1986 that he couldn't direct. WHY oh WHY did they let him do it again???

1) A strong writing team. Graffiti Bridge has absolutely nothing to it. It's the cinematic equivalent of gossamer -- except even gossamer, if the light hits it the right way, can obscure and suggest depth. This film has nothing to obscure or present.

If it was going to be a follow-up to Purple Rain and suggest some sort of continuity, it should have been willing to refashion the Kid from the underdog of the original movie to someone a bit bitter, even villainous. Save him by destroying him as a character. The Kid's confusion was disarming in 1984. But this script left him with no sign of growth. He appeared stunted.

And, allow women to do more in this film than be muses. It took a lot to be even more chauvinistic than its prequel, but Graffiti Bridge succeeds. Allowing better female characters to play realer roles in this film would've done a lot to make the movie more palatable. But, again, that would've been dependent upon a totally different, far superior script.

2) A real set, shooting on location. Serious production. I'm sure Prince's continual war with Warner Bros. probably contributed to the lack of production money, but even The Blair Witch managed some on-location work... Prince should be ashamed of that bridge. I used to have a similar Styrofoam bridge when I was a kid -- except it was smaller. My battery-powered toy 4x4 trucks used to go over it.

3) Acting. I would have loved an indie approach to this movie, something with some real actors. This is the one movie of Prince's that lacked any non-musical actors in major roles. Clarence Williams III brought it in Purple Rain. So did Kristin Scott Thomas and Steven Berkoff kept UTCM all a-simmer with their performances. Have a movie where Prince is the strongest actor, and you're guaranteeing a turkey.

4) Lose Tevin. No, seriously. Lose him.

contrapposto said:

Crispin Helion Glover is H.O.T!!!!


Anyway I think a documentary film on his making of Graffiti Bridge would have been interesting.


I would have hired Anna Sui for costume design.

Richard Donner, Terry Gilliam or Spike Lee for Director

I would have allowed major ad libbing.

DesireeNevermind said:

u do know that spike did visit the set when they were shooting right?

L4OATheOriginal said:

Well then its official....Spike is the real reason GB sucked hairy ass!

1) i understand he wanted 2 showcase what paisley park studios could do 4 as a soundstage etc. but in this movie it should have been just used 4 the musical numbers which should have all been done from the stage and not just anywhere. if it's going 2 b a musical, b a musical, it's going 2 b from the stage, let it all b from the stage

2) develop more of mavis's character, she runs a gospel club. well how more fitting could it have been 2 have the kid and melody cool do the song god is alive 2 fit the spirtual aspect the kid was trying 2 say.

3) do not have shake and tick tick bang represent the battle between the kid and morris cause unlike the kid, at least morris was present at the battle 2 c which show/song would b better. the song the latest fashion clearly stands as a battle piece and more effectively presents the tension between glam slam and pandemonium

4) SPEAKING OF WHICH ..alright who else scratched their heads wondering y levi and miko where out of breath from just running across the street 2 the back alley of glam slam when pandemonium club WAS JUST ACROSS THE FUCKING STREET? this leads in2 set design and location. the problem i always have with this film is that it's 2 claustrophobic. when the montage sequence shows outside scenes u wonder OH THERE IS THE SUN!!! so less having the sets look like the sun doesn't exist

5) scratch out tc ellis!!! or make him one of the gameboyz anything more than "yo kid i told u should have let me rap!" either make george clinton a part of the film or don't. tell robin power that this ain't south central LA it's minnepolis.

6) space...more dialogue between songs please

7) put back in can't stop this feeling i got,

8) theives in the temple..okay in the complex of the film, guess what? less is more..the whole following morris around in a car makes no sense!!! just leave the whole video shot as is would have been better

9) somebody teach these fools how 2 play hangman
10) and if aura dies and the ambulance comes..please make sure they stick around longer than 20 seconds. in fact y should people care about that aura got run over if she never truly interacted with the community at all? make ur audience/community in the film give a damn that she got runned over.