But Mia Farrow can't keep her mind on the job. Instead, she would rather chat about the movies with her coworker and sister, Stephanie Farrow. Mia is fired, and now things look really bleak. She attends the local movie house for escape, watching yet again their film of the fortnight, The Purple Rose of Cairo.
It is a comedy filled with wealthy folks living it up, typical cinematic fare for the era. One of the supporting actors is Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), a handsome and enthusiastic explorer. Tom's eyes lock with the captivated Mia Farrow, sitting in the audience, and he steps out of the movie to whisk her away to romantic adventures. The rest of the cast is flummoxed, and bickers onscreen waiting for Tom to return and finish the film.
Meanwhile, Baxter's unconsummated affair with Mia has one problem: his stage money is no good. With nowhere to go, he hangs about a closed amusement park. Mia is dating Baxter, but still lives with Aiello, who is as awful as ever.
Enter Gil Shepherd, the actor who played Tom Baxter. Shepherd (also Jeff Daniels) is upset that his character, who looks just like him, is on the loose on the East Coast. Shepherd flies there, and because it is a movie, immediately encounters Mia Farrow, and learns she has a daily rendezvous with Baxter. Shepherd falls in love with Farrow also (or so he claims) and encourages her to choose him over Baxter, which would leave that character with no options except to return forever to The Purple Rose of Cairo, just what Shepherd wants.
How others will see it. Woody Allen's period romantic fantasy was not a box office smash. It did better with the film festivals, winning Best Film at BAFTA and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes. The script was also Oscar-nominated.
Today at imdb.com, though, the movie has only 38K user ratings, comparable with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), which has 31K votes. At least the user rating is much higher, at 7.7 out of 10. There is only a marginal gender or generation gap.
The user reviews are mostly fawning, full of praise for the script, story, and characters. Most criticism seems to dwell on Aiello's detestable character, and the movie's downbeat ending: Mia Farrow loses Tom Baxter, and is promptly abandoned by Gil Shepherd, whose love for her appears to be nothing more than an actor's performance. Mia can return to Aiello. Or maybe her sister will take her in. I bet her husband would like that.
How I felt about it. This is one of Woody Allen's best movies. The only ones I prefer to it are Manhattan, Bullets Over Broadway, Annie Hall, The Front, and Play It Again, Sam. The last two in the short list were not directed by Allen, but he stars in them, and they seem like Woody Allen movies.
What makes The Purple Rose of Cairo better than, for example, Midnight in Paris, which also has fantasy elements and a romance, and also lacks the screen presence of Woody Allen? One could argue that most everything is better: the script is more amusing, the characters are more compelling, and the situations are more charming. Specifically, Jeff Daniels is better than Owen Wilson, and Mia Farrow is better than Rachel McAdams. And Woody Allen's gift fizzled out after Hannah and Her Sisters, though the movies keep coming year after year (despite the scandalous 1992 Farrow-Allen breakup), and continue to secure A-list stars.
But you want specific information. Why is the script for The Purple Rose of Cairo worthy of a Golden Globes trophy, while Midnight in Paris (better as a 1962 Duke Ellington album) was unworthy of the same honor (which it nonetheless won). Perhaps because Midnight in Paris puts dubious statements into the mouths of famous dead people (Gertrude Stein says "The artist's job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence."). The Purple Rose of Cairo evokes a gloomy era and finds the one escape in it: the glamour of the movies, false but a great improvement over reality.