The Purple Rose of Cairo Movie Review

If Radio Days is Woody Allen's love letter to radio, The Purple Rose of Cairo is his ode to old movies. Purple Rose, however, is about ten times as ridiculous, its conceit being that Jeff Daniels' Depression-era movie star walks right out of the movie screen to be with the girl in the audience (Mia Farrow) whom he loves. This of course causes havoc for the characters on the screen (who provide the most hilarity in the film) and the real people here on earth, who simply aren't prepared for a fictional character to become one of them.

Eventually, this sends the studio into a tizzy, and the actor who plays the movie star shows up to try and coax his alter-ego back onto the screen. Meanwhile, the fictional character learns that you can't use fictional money in a restaurant and that cars don't just start on their own without keys. It's all lighthearted and full of whimsy, and that's about it. Allen presumably is trying to make a statement here about wanting what we can't have, and how harsh reality can be, but it doesn't really come across. Purple Rose is just too goofy to carry much of a punch.

Incidentally this is only Allen's second film in which he did not appear, and according to the disc insert, it's also his favorite movie. That I don't get, but it's Woody....