The Purple Rose of Cairo

1985 romantic comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: It's the happy 1930s, but Cecilia the waitress doesn't have much to be happy about. She has job troubles, a loaf of an abusive husband, and not much hope. Her only escape is the theater, especially in the movie-within-the-movie, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and one of its characters, Tom Baxter. After her fifth or so trip to see the movie, Tom Baxter notices her and decides to leave the film. This bothers the other characters in the movie, the titular film's producers, and Gil Shepherd who plays Tom Baxter.

It starts slowly and realistically, but once the moment arrives, a great magically-realistic Woody Allen moment, this is relentlessly fun for anybody wanting to sit down and watch an entertaining rom-com and delicately layered for anybody who likes to think when they watch movies. I couldn't help thinking of Buster's Sherlock Jr. during the fantastical meta-moments, and like that classic silent comedy, this one has this creative fervor, taking a tired genre (romantic comedy) and injecting an infectious liveliness into it. I really liked Mia Farrow and I really really liked Jeff Daniels in dual-roles. Baxter and Shepherd are similar, but it's the subtle differences in the two that make his performance so impressive. Rose is very well written with Allen managing to create a fantasy with characters believable enough to make me completely buy the premise, kind of an anti-The Invention of Lying. It's also really funny. But I like to pretend that I'm a thinking man, and it's the questions this movie raises (not necessarily answers) about fantasy and reality, the role of cinema, and Hollywood ideals that makes this special. Woodyheads, of course, would love it, maybe more than anything else he directed in the 80s, but there's enough here for any cinemaphile to love. It's delightful!