I am so pre-disposed to love anything Prince did, that after he died I decided to revisit his ill-fated follow-up to Purple Rain. I'd sat through it once before and hated it, but I had hoped that perhaps a second viewing would reveal some of its charms, or at the very least redeem it as an imperfect curio.
Despite my undying adoration for Prince, it's still a terrible film. It looks terrific, the black and white cinematography is very flattering to Prince and the rest of the cast, and he and Jerome Benton (who plays his long suffering sidekick here) do have a genuine chemistry, but otherwise the movie offers very little in terms of entertainment or story.
What little plot there is consists of Prince mugging and frolicking around as a gigolo who specializes in seducing rich women. He falls for a particularly snooty one, played by Kristin Scott-Thomas, which provokes the ire of her evil, rich father-in-law, who, in a pretty inexplicable twist, has the singer gunned down in the final act.
I finally think I figured out what is fundamentally wrong with this movie -- besides the fact that Prince barely performs any music in it -- and I think it's that he's playing a role that would have been much better suited for his Purple Rain nemesis Morris Day.
Day had great comic timing and a kind of goofball sex appeal. Watching him prance around this vaguely surreal setting with Benton at his side would have been a lot of fun, but comedy doesn't fit Prince quite like a glove (even though privately he was known to be very funny). Perhaps he was jealous of the praise Day received for his performance in Purple Rain, compared to the mixed reviews he received himself, and, always competitive, wanted to top him.
Needless to say he doesn't. And his tendency to act petulant and sexist opposite women -- which was somewhat justified in Purple Rain by a horrific life at home that gave his character gravitas -- is vain and self indulgent here.
Eddie Murphy is no less vain or misogynistic in Raw, but he is also incredibly funny -- albeit in a guilty pleasure sort of way -- which is why his concert film is the rousing success Prince's film isn't.
Raw was essentially a victory lap for him. After a string of huge box office hits (including 48 Hrs., Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop), Murphy was the biggest movie star on the planet and so he could release an old-fashioned stand-up comedy film and have it outgross many traditional blockbusters.
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| Eddie Murphy in Raw |
He could parade on stage in a skintight purple leather jumpsuit and not be questioned over it. He could boast about his own sexual prowess and get nothing but roars of approval from women in the crowd. There's something infectious about his egoism at this period. It's not politically correct but it's undeniably charismatic.
Like in all of Murphy's stand-up you have to put the problematic material in the context of its time. It's homophobic, virulently anti-women to the point of paranoid, and hostile to the culture of Africa that he would more lovingly send up in the following year's Coming to America.
But it's also chockfull of Murphy's unique talent. His ability to take on other personas is really what set him apart from Richard Pryor and other A-list comics of the day. He effortlessly slips into the voice and body language of a stereotypical Italian who is on a macho high after seeing a Rocky movie and he personifies members of his own family (both male and female) as they argue around the dinner table.
Too many of Murphy's movies have dialed back what made him great, but with no one else to share the stage and no convoluted plot to drag him down, in Raw he's given full reign to explore his own eccentricities and even the offensive concepts offer an intriguing window into Murphy's own psyche.
In 1987, he was on top of the world and probably had no reason to anticipate the rocky ups and downs his career would take in the decades that followed. Meanwhile, Prince would make a couple more films (the highly regarded but little seen concert film Sign O' the Times, and the barely watchable Graffiti Bridge), but seemed to concede eventually that he was no movie star.
Murphy has remained a viable, and unsung draw for decades but has recently disappeared from movie screens and also public view. His appearance at the SNL40 special was a disappointment, he didn't tell jokes or participate in sketches, he just looked uncomfortable and that made me sad.
I still think he has greatness in him, both as an actor and a comedian, and hopefully we'll get to see it before he too is gone too soon.
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