Essay/Term paper: The color purple

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Movie Reviews

Byron Hooper
11/18/96
The Color Purple film review

The Color Purple

The movie "The Color Purple," directed by Steven Speilberg, was, in general, a
satisfactory film. It was enjoyable, if you don't consider accuracy towards the novel it is
portraying important. Speilberg obviously had little, if any, respect toward the original
story, by Alice Walker. He slaughtered a story most people had heard of, but never read.
I thought the movie itself was rather good. It had it's own good and bad points. Up until
about when Sofia left Harpo, they were almost identical. After that they are almost two
different stories with the same ending.
The movie was written purely for entertainment. It added a small number of scenes, but
cut more than it added. Also, it emphasized different parts of the story than the book.
The film is about a young black girl growing up in the south, abused by, first, her father,
then her husband, whom she had no choice in marrying, as is the book. But in the novel,
after Celie found her sister's letters, the main focus was Nettie in Africa. In the movie, the
section on Africa was only ten, fifteen minutes long, and the rest was based more on the
rest of Celie's life.
I'll admit, most movies, that follow the book that they're based on word for word are
pretty monotonous (i.e. Dune), but this particular movie probably would have been better,
at least in my own opinion,