YMMV / Purple Rain

• And You Thought It Would Fail: A few days before the premiere, Prince had a nightmare that Siskel & Ebert despised the film, with Roger Ebert ripping the film apart. He said, "I dreamed those two guys on the TV were reviewing the movie and that fat guy was tearing me up!" They both loved the film in their reviews.
• Award Snub: The soundtrack lost the 1985 Grammy Award for Album of the Year to Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down, though it did win an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score^note The prevailing theory is that the rock-oriented Grammy voters were split between this and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, letting the pop and R&B blocks push Can't Slow Down to the win.. Despite this, none of the songs were nominated.
• Awesome Music: Hell, the first eight minutes of the movie are more than enough... let's face it, the whole soundtrack. And even the movie's non-Prince and the Revolution material is pretty good!
• Designated Hero: The Kid. We're supposed to cheer for this Jerkass to see the light, and he kind of never does.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Kid is a Jerkass who bullies Wendy and Lisa and restricts their creativity. In real life, Prince was a huge Jerkass to Wendy and Lisa, who eventually split with Prince.
  • In the song "Purple Rain," The Kid tells Wendy and Lisa "Nobody cares about your music." They would later release five albums on their own, all flops.
  • After "Darling Nikki," Billy Sparks tells The Kid, "Nobody understands your music but you," which seemed to predict Prince's career decline during the 1990s.
• Heartwarming Moments: The Kid finally playing "Purple Rain", dedicating it to his father and crediting it to Wendy and Lisa. Midway through the performance, he kisses Wendy on the cheek.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Let's Go Crazy" contains the lyric, "Let's get nuts". Prince would later do the soundtrack for a film that contains that line in dialogue.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The drama is clearly secondary to the music. And the Fanservice.
• Narm Charm: The film is hardly a Best Picture winner, as it's a pretty obvious music-selling vehicle for Prince. Nevertheless, the soundtrack and the fact that it stars Prince still endears it to many. The fantastic soundtrack, especially the title track, undoubtedly help.
• Nightmare Fuel: Believe it or not the film has some creepy moments.
  • There's the casual abusive treatment Apollonia occasionally receives.
  • There is one scene in which The Kid and Apollonia listen to a demo tape in which a woman is supposedly crying played backwards. The Kid, amused by this, chuckles that "It sounds like she's laughing, doesn't it?". Also crosses into Fridge Horror when you stop to wonder, how did The Kid obtain a tape recording of a woman crying?
  • The domestic abuse scenes taking place in The Kid's house are quite disturbing, especially for anyone that grew up in that type of a rough childhood.
  • When The Kid returns home to the darkened, quiet house, his home is a mess, and when he turns on a light, his father shoots himself in the head.
  • The Kid's hallucinations alone are nightmarish, flashbacking back to him finding his father's near-dead body on the floor with the gun next to him, the chalk on the floor where his father's body used to be, and ending with a hallucination of what appears to be The Kid hanging himself in the same basement. This frightens The Kid enough to cause him to destroy the basement.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The opening scenes are a solid depiction of Minneapolis at the time of release in 1984, and the people in the opening concert scene are rife with many examples of the period's fashion; complete with varying degrees of '80s Hair. There's also the throwaway gag of Apollonia ditching her taxi because of the expensive at the time fare, which is relatively standard in today's money.

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