Review of The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) by Jon M — 09 Jun 2007

I found this film a real rarity for Woody Allen. I felt it was poorly written. It attempted to make connections throughout about the real world and the world on the screen. Those attempts were evident, but those attempts were unsuccessful.

Once I put aside the pure ridiculousness of Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) walking off the screen into the 1930's of the real world, the idea of the film seemed somewhat clever. There was no easy way to make it happen so once that was done, this film had it opportunities to be good.

Jeff Daniels didn't help its cause as he continued to turn in, what is in my opinion, a terrible performance. It was essential for him to differentiate between his fictional character in Tom Baxter and his real life character, Gil Shepard, who plays Baxter.

Daniels is not a good enough actor to pull this off, while at the same time delivering those subtle lines suggesting the differences and, more importantly, similarities of real life and movie life. Woody Allen is always capable of bringing his random and unique humor to his movies however; in this case, my laughs were few and far between.

The bright parts of the film were the performances of Mia Farrow who played the shy, somewhat nervous and confused Cecelia who gets wrapped up in a love triangle with Gil and Tom while she is trying to better her life during the depression all while she is toughing her way through her marriage to Monk, played very well by Danny Aiello.

Ultimately the film was a bit over the top and ridiculous and regardless of the performances, I'm not sure this script had much of a chance.