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• A veiled and failed attempt to promote Apollonia 6, the girl trio formed by Prince (as Vanity 6, before Vanity went solo) in real life and represented in the film as a cynical concoction of Morris Day, kind of like the Minneapolis funk answer to Malcolm McLaren’s creation of the Sex Pistols. They only perform one song (“Sex Shooter”, which became a minor hit) and only put out one EP. Or:



• An attempt to counter the image of Prince’s aloof reputation
  as a (brilliant) control freak by showing him making nice with The Revolution (notice how the Prince stand-in “The Kid” is not billed separately from the band) and in competition with The Time, another band he at least had a hand in forming and writing material for back in real life.

Such concerns, however, are often trumped by the vibrancy and urgency of the musical performances - largely of the full songs - in Purple Rain and the authenticity of its on-location shooting in Minneapolis. Graffiti Bridge, shot on highly stylized sets at “Paisley Park Studios” has neither of those attributes in its favor. This allows my cynical side to look for obvious parallels to Purple Rain. The film and the album (which was released the summer before the film and had already run its course by November) seems like nothing more than an audio/visual audition reel for New Power Generation, Prince’s first new side band formed since the dissolution of The Revolution. (They were foreshadowed on his 1988 album Lovesexy and would be billed alongside him on Diamonds and Pearls in 1991 and Love Generation in 1992.)





In directing and writing the screenplay, Prince allows his egomania to run loose, portraying “The Kid” this time as the sole savior of the music scene, vying with Morris Day for control of the club Glam Slam (although if this is still set in Minneapolis is never really made clear or addressed). Buried under what could only be described as a funk mullet, The Kid is as irresistible as ever to women and as brooding and pensive as ever to the rest of the world. But unlike his rocky but redeemed relationship with The Revolution, The Kid is de facto leader of the NPG and the only one allowed any kind of presence. Even the running rivalry between Morris Day and The Kid, which gave Purple Rain much of its comic energy, is tamped down and replaced with a more explicit misogyny as both parties treat women as mere side projects.

If Prince’s previous feature film, Under the Cherry Moon, was an anachronism centered in a forgotten Hollywood musical past, then Graffiti Bridge is a would-be sci-fi musical missing only the science fiction and the muse. Ingrid Chavez, playing Aura, is supposed to fill the second of those roles as an angel come down to Earth to… fan the flames of the Morris/Kid rivalry? Recite insipid poetry from her notebooks? But she has even less heft and substance to her acting chops than Apollonia did and comes off as Prince’s bland kid sister, who nabbed the gig through nepotism (which would be both icky, and yet not unexpected.)

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