The Color Purple review: Alice Walker's epistolary novel gets the musical treatment

"It's been two weeks since 'Mean Girls', and here we go again," said Kevin Maher in The Times: another "film adaptation of a stage musical adaptation of an original, much-adored movie". And beneath it all, there is Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. But in this version, "Walker's poetic prose, religious themes and epistolary structure" have vanished, under a "plethora of incongruous show tunes". 

So, as in the book, the resilient Celie (Fantasia Barrino) is repeatedly raped by her stepfather in early 20th century Georgia, and forced to give up the babies she bears as a result – but "now she intersperses the torture with jazzy dance routines". And when she is sold to the deranged Mister (Colman Domingo), who tries to rape her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) then "beats Celie into a stupor over the next three decades", she has "some nifty melodies for comfort".

The cast are "fine", and director Blitz Bazawule does bring "pizzazz" to the film, but "'Historical Racism: The Feelgood Musical' was always going to be a hard sell".

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It's not a subtle film, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph: "an all-singing, all-sobbing weepie", it is filled with sequins and features some "uproarious choreography". But its "suite of soul, R&B and gospel numbers" will have you "bopping along"; and though it's pretty saccharine, I "snaffled up" every minute of it. 

Of all the adaptations of Walker's book I've seen, this is my favourite, said Kyle Smith in The Wall Street Journal. Sure, the characters are "broadly drawn", but the film "elicits all the hugs and tears you could expect from holiday entertainment, and then some".

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