movie review the color purple

Movie Review: The Color Purple
Byron Hooper
11/18/96
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,