Movie Review - The Purple Rose of Cairo

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

Starring Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny Aiello

Directed by Woody Allen

An ode to classic cinema and a glimpse at how we utilize motion pictures to escape from our everyday lives, Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo is a nice effort from the writer-director, but is a little too slight and drawn out to be in the filmmaker's upper echelon of films.  Still, it's an all around pleasant movie, perhaps Mr. Allen's most charming and sentimental, with nary a hint of pessimism or neurosis.

In 1930s Depression Era New Jersey, waitress Cecilia (Mia Farrow) heads to the cinema nearly every day to find solace in the characters onscreen.  Cecilia's real life is fraught with troubles pertaining to her out-of-work and possibly philandering husband Monk (Danny Aiello), so she instead is constantly heading to the movies to escape to the world portrayed in the light comedy The Purple Rose of Cairo.  While watching the film for the fifth time, the charming character Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) begins to speak directly to Cecilia and he soon walks right out of the movie screen and into her arms.  Together they run away and begin to fall in love with one another.  However, Tom's shenanigans not only strand his fellow castmates in the film with nothing to do floundering around in reel two without a way of continuing on in the story, but they also begin to wreak havoc on the actor who portrays Tom in the film, Gil Shepherd (also played by Jeff Daniels).  Gil soon meets up with Cecilia and the two also begin to fall for one another.  This sets up an interesting love triangle that doesn't necessarily end the way I expected it to.

Before I watched the film, I assumed that Tom Baxter coming out of the screen would simply be part of Cecilia's imagination.  Cleverly, though, Woody Allen stages this as reality.  Everyone in town is witness to Tom's leaping into the "real world" and this event soon makes its way to the national stage.  Personally, I thought this was rather ingenious.  However, the film tries very hard to ape classic cinema of the 30s and 40s, but it never quite gets there.  The humor often falls flat, but the romance is rather charming and sweet and helps make up for the film's faults.

With some nice performances from Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny Aiello, The Purple Rose of Cairo is a pleasant enough diversion if you're looking for a nice flick to watch some rainy afternoon.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-