Movie Review: 'The Color Purple' is a stirring big-screen musical powered by its spectacular cast

Exuberant performances from a cast led by Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P

Exuberant performances from a cast led by Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson and Danielle Brooks breathe life into Blitz Bazawule’s stirring “The Color Purple,” adapted from the Tony-winning Broadway production.

Alice Walker ’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel, which Steven Spielberg turned into the 1985 film, may be an unlikely book for such bright adaptations. Walker’s novel, told through Celie’s letters penned to God, is harrowingly bleak in its tale of trauma, poverty, abuse and rape. Much of Walker’s “The Color Purple” doesn’t scream song and dance.

But the emotional triumphs of Walker’s novel and its soul-stirring tribute to the power of Black women lend themselves to the kind of maximalist spectacle of Bazawule’s razzle-dazzle adaptation. The tragedy found in “The Color Purple” makes its final release all the more rousing.

It can still be an awkward mix, and, like Spielberg’s movie, not all of the tonal changes work in this version of “The Color Purple.” But the payoff is immense, as are the thrilling performances at the movie’s center.

Barrino, who in 2007 took over the role on Broadway, plays Celie with a raw soulfulness. In the film’s opening scenes, she’s picked by Mister ( Colman Domingo ) to be his wife, though her role at his messy, ramshackle home is much closer to servant.