Mia Farrow is wonderful as Cecilia, a small town waitress during the Great Depression. Married to a selfish lout named Monk (Danny Aiello),she's often in need of escape. And she finds it in the movies that she repeatedly watches. One day, to the astonishment of Cecilia and everybody in the theatre, movie character Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) emerges from his picture and enters the real world. He's become utterly taken with her, and is sick and tired of his dull routine, uttering the same lines over and over. Life becomes even more surreal for Cecilia when Gil Shepherd (Daniels again),the actor who played Tom, comes to the town to do damage control and HE falls in love with her as well!

"The Purple Rose of Cairo" is an ingenious concept film, well realized by writer / director Woody Allen. It's utterly charming, especially to any fan of the cinema. Some of the brightest moments happen when A) the other characters in the film-within-the-film become utterly lost, and just mope around, interacting with theatre patrons, and B) the golly-gee-whiz completely naive Tom is taken by prostitute Emma (Dianne Weist) to a whorehouse, where he seems to have no idea what goes on in such a place!

The recreation of a Depression era town is effective, as is Woody's emulation of classic 1930s black & white Hollywood pictures. Dick Hyman does the upbeat jazz score, and the excellent cinematography is the work of masterful Gordon Willis.

Mia and Jeff are just perfect, with the latter getting to do a memorable scene with the character and the actor arguing with each other. Aiello and Weist lead an excellent supporting cast consisting of talents such as Edward Herrmann, John Wood, Karen Akers, and Van Johnson, and top character actors like Irving Metzman, Milo O'Shea, Robert Trebor, John Rothman, Raymond Serra, and Michael Tucker. Glenne Headly has a bit as one of the hookers.

Clever through and through in its melding of reel life and real life, with both fictional and actual people struggling to come to terms with their new surroundings. The finale, however, really does break your heart.

Eight out of 10.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

There's no way you can't like the ingenuity of the movie, and the fun it has. It's about the joy of life, and love of the movies, and the difficulty to tell the difference sometimes (at least when in the theater).

In some ways this is one of Woody Allen's lightest movies, and certainly lightweight compared to the more serious movies of this period (like the stunning gem, "Another Woman"). It's not zany like his earliest comedies ("Love and Death"). And it's not deeply observant and sometimes downright moving and brilliant like his best movies (like "Annie Hall" or "Crimes and Misdemeanors"). In that way it feels like what some novelists would call an "entertainment" to distinguish from their heavier masterpieces, and sometimes these are the most readable of all. Or the most watchable.

"The Purple Rose of Cairo" is inventive, warm, and touching. It's really high brow hilarious when the people on the screen react to the situation, not only because of the existential reality shift going on, but because they are all high brow types. Then there are the everyday scenes with Mia Farrow, the lead actress in the real world (usually),and support from Danny Aiello, really just a foil for the main romances (two) going on with Farrow (singular). It's not as complicated as it sounds, which might prove the elegance of Allen's writing.

A beautiful, delicate movie without undo weightiness. Joyous, yes, even in its melancholy end.

This movie really got me hooked. The plot about an unhappy women who goes to see the same escapist film again and again is charming--particularly when the characters in the movie begin to notice that she keeps coming back again and again! Ultimately, the hero of the movie is so taken by her devotion, that he literally walks out of the picture to meet her and then refuses to go back! This is WONDERFUL and surreal. It got even better when all the other characters just stood by and waited and waited for him to return and finally didn't know what to do with themselves!! This was great. Then, for some odd reason (not that it wasn't already odd),the movie could NEVER end until he returned and they couldn't show any movies until this was resolved. I was THRILLED and up until the end, this may have been my favorite Woody Allen movie.

Unfortunately, the same sweetness that had prevailed throughout most of the movie completely disappeared at the end. Instead of the expected ending, it provided a "life stinks" ending and completely ruined the experience for me. In fact, I think the movie ended on a rather cruel note.