Review of Prince: Sign 'o' the Times (1987) by Mitchell W — 23 Apr 2016

There are a few people who called this the greatest concert film of all-time, and it's not too difficult to see why. As a filmmaker, Prince may not be in the same class as D. A. Pennebaker ("Monterey Pop"), Jonathan Demme ("Stop Making Sense"), Martin Scorsese ("The Last Waltz") et al, but for my money, he was the greatest live performer in the history of pop music for too many reasons to go into here.

He always had nothing less than an excellent band behind him, but this was his best live group, one that lasted only for a few tours. When they shot this film, they had just finished a very short tour in support of Prince's greatest album, "Sign O the Times.

" (They only did a few months in Europe when Prince decided to make this film in lieu of doing anymore legs elsewhere, including America.) The scripted attempts at creating a back story are clumsy, but they amount to a few brief moments - the rest of the time we see Prince at the peak of his powers, performing his best material, and it's astounding.

He's never made a better film and this easily crushes any of his full-blown narrative pictures. Most, if not all, of these numbers were filmed in Paisley Park, but the film credits a show in the Netherlands - supposedly those performances were shelved due to lighting issues (hence the move to Paisley Park, which doubles as a film studio).

Hopefully that footage will see a release some day as the European shows were much longer than this film and usually incorporated many more numbers from the rest of his career.