‘The Color Purple’ Review: Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks and Taraji P. Henson are Electric but the Film Can’t Break Free from the Stage

Adapting a stage musical for the screen has tripped up a fair share of filmmakers in the past. Hew too closely to the stage version, and you can end up with something limp and hollow like Joel Schumacher’s moribund Phantom of the Opera. Adapt the show too much, though, and you can end up with something that may have its merits as a film but loses much of what made the piece work so well on stage, like Tim Burton’s admirable attempt at Sweeney Todd. It helps if you start with strong source material, of course, but not all popular musicals are also good musicals.

The Color Purple, as adapted from Alice Walker’s classic novel for the stage by Marsha Norman with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray, is not a great musical. The songs are melodic but not exactly memorable, the book flattens a lot of the novel, and in its original iteration, the show was weighed down by the overly grandiose directorial vision. Curiously, it was the stripped-back Menier Chocolate Factory revival that came to Broadway in 2015 that made the strongest argument for it to be adapted to film. Despite the lack of sweeping pageantry that marked the original Broadway production, the John Doyle-directed revival put the emphasis firmly on Walker’s characters, with the actors given the space to create sharper portrayals, revealing the intimate character study at the heart of the material. While the medium of cinema certainly can offer performers such a space, it also demands exactly the kind of grandeur that bogged down the original Broadway production. Given this assignment, director Blitz Bazawule (Black Is King) does what any reasonable person might do: Split the difference. All of the film’s visual gusto has been put into the musical numbers while the book scenes play out in a naturalistic style that allows for all the psychological insight that a talented cast can muster.

Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work. Fatima Robinson has created some fun choreography for the cast, who perform it with an infectious verve. The shot compositions, however, too often make the dancers feel like they’re performing on a stage for an audience. You can feel the stage proscenium – the last thing you should feel while watching a film in a cinema – just off-screen. This clashes with the naturalism of the rest of the film as early as the film’s opening. Young Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) and her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) play together on the Georgia coast in a tranquil idyll before returning to town, where they go to church. The first part of the scene, with just the girls, is quiet and introspective, with Dan Laustsen’s camera observing the sisterly bond the two actresses gently create and nurture. However, as soon as the musical pace picks up and the choreography kicks in, the cast starts singing directly into the camera and putting on a capital-P performance. It’s hard not to get swept up in the high spirits, but it’s also hard not to get whiplash, and the film does this throughout its two-hour and twenty-minute running time.

Thankfully, the cast commits enough so that the story’s emotional beats land, providing the film the spine it needs to work. Bailey proves that she’s a star with or without the Disney machine behind her, and Mpasi is every bit her equal, a true star in the making. Their infectious energy provides a solid base for the film to build from, as their sisterly bond is the thread that pulls Celie through every terrible turn her life takes. As Celie’s abusive husband, known only as Mister, Colman Domingo shows the terrifying flip side to his galvanizing work in Rustin, completely losing himself in the man’s casual, selfish evil. As Mister’s enterprising son Harpo, Corey Hawkins is a ray of sunshine, even when he makes the mistake of treating his wife Sofia in the same manner as he saw his father treat Celie. He makes Harpo’s drive to succeed and be better than his father palpable, and you root for him to achieve those goals.

The audience’s applause, however, is reserved for the trio of ladies featured on the poster. As Mister’s mistress and true love, the lounge singer Shug Avery, Taraji P. Henson is a ball of fire, setting the screen ablaze with her charisma. Her big number, “Push Da Button,” is the film’s musical highlight, a good old-fashioned show-stopper that Henson devours with the slinky smirk of a cat that got the canary. Henson also brings a touching tenderness to her scenes with Celie. Although the material downplays the sapphic romance from the novel, these scenes represent the cinematic highlights of the film, where Bazawule and Laustsen let all their wildest impulses take over, resulting in the film’s most cinematic-feeling scenes. Returning to the role for which she earned a Tony nomination, Danielle Brooks walks away with the whole film as Sofia. With an arc that takes her from lovestruck romantic to woman scorned to chastened husk and back, Brooks must run a gamut of emotions, and she nails every single one in an electric performance. Demanding the audience’s attention from her first entrance, Brooks’s screen presence is so magnetic that you can’t look at anything else when she’s on screen, and you miss her like hell when she’s gone (which she unfortunately is for long stretches). It’s a gift of a role that results in a gift of a performance, earning the kinds of mid-film ovations that turned Jennifer Hudson into an Oscar winner for Dreamgirls. She’s dynamite, pulsing with energy even when Sofia is at her lowest during a stint in jail for disrespecting a white woman. All of the infectious energy that marked her breakout role as Taystee on Orange is the New Black is present, with an astute psychological depth that not many actresses could get out of a role so small.

Celie may be the lead role, but the flashier supporting performances overshadow Fantasia Barrino. This is partially by design, as Celie has learned to make herself small after being beaten down and taken advantage of for so long. Barrino’s mousiness in the role is almost painful to watch, as the American Idol champ actively suppresses her natural charisma to become Celie. While she’s strong in the dramatic scenes, the character is pretty one-note for most of the film, and Barrino can’t overcome it. Her gravelly voice has always had the grit of someone who has been put through the wringer and come out the other side, a quality that makes her feel like an obvious choice to play Celie. However, her voice does not possess the forcefulness necessary to carry the eleven o’clock number “I’m Here,” a gigantic power ballad meant to blow an entire theater against the back wall. Having taken over the role in the original Broadway production, Barrino understands the power of that song, and she’s able to make it a stirring moment for the character. But there’s still something missing from that moment. The camera moves as the orchestra swells, pulling back as Celie proudly proclaims her personhood to the world, and it should feel monumental but never quite gets there. The song’s final crescendo is the climactic note that the whole film has been building towards, and despite her strong character work, Barrino’s voice doesn’t have the all-consuming, crystal-clear power the song demands.

Despite all the things working against the film’s success, however, the core of Walker’s story is so strong that it still basically works. In the novel, the vividly-drawn characters jump right off the page, and the combined charisma and talent of the performers ensure that they jump off the screen in this iteration, as well. Lapses in the screenplay or slightly underwhelming vocal performances are easily forgiven by the time we reach the extended epilogue of a final scene, which radiates such warmth that Laustsen’s ridiculous overuse of gold filters finally feels appropriate, if unnecessary. The arc of the story, following these phenomenal women as they find their inner strength and assert their right to exist in a world that would rather hide them away in the shadows (add Laustsen to the ever-growing list of cinematographers who need to work on adjusting lighting for darker skin tones), has such a strong emotional core that it’s difficult not to be moved. The overly performative quality to the musical numbers, while not fatal, does cut the film off at the knees, however. Its emotional impact can only go so far because we end up rooting and feeling for the performers playing these characters more than we do for the characters themselves. While that can lead to a similar emotional endpoint, it’s a mere facsimile of the impact The Color Purple can have when we’re invested in the story and characters more than the performance of them. The film may have the brightness and lushness of its namesake hue, but it lacks its full-bodied depth.

Grade: B

Warner Bros will release The Color Purple only in theaters on December 25, 2023.