Prince: Sign 'o' the Times (1987)
There is something wonderfully audacious about the origins of Sign 'o' the Times. When the album underperformed in the American charts, Prince's response was not a re-release or a carefully targeted new single but to go and make an entire concert film to sell the thing. A feature-length advert, essentially, powered by pure self-belief. And the most "Prince" thing about all of this is that it more or less works.
This is a lavish, funky, flamboyantly staged record of his 1987 tour, and as a showcase for the man's gifts it is genuinely hard to argue with. Whatever else you make of it, the music is superb. Prince was, I would argue, one of the most underrated musicians and composers in all of popular music, and the film gives him room to prove it from the off, including an opening stretch of something like ten unbroken minutes of pure performance that announces, right away, exactly what you are in for.
He plays, he struts, he commands a stage like almost no one before or since. His band are every bit as tight as the material demands, and there are moments here where you are just watching a performer operating at the absolute peak of his abilities and wondering how one person contains that much. Purely as a piece of music film-making, it is thrilling stuff, and I found myself grinning at the sheer nerve of it all.
But here is the honest caveat, and it is one I keep running into with music films: this really is for the fans. It made me think of Quadrophenia, in the sense that both films demand a certain pre-existing devotion from the audience. With Sign 'o' the Times even more so, because the entire thing is essentially ninety unbroken minutes of one man's vision of himself, and if you are not already inside that vision then no amount of dazzling stagecraft will pull you in. I have found the same thing with concert films and music movies more broadly. You rather have to be on the right wavelength to be carried along, and if you are not, the spectacle starts to feel like a very long interval.
I like Prince a good deal. I admire him enormously, actually. But I cannot pretend I can easily sit through a feature-length Prince concert and feel it entirely at every moment. There are stretches here where I was watching with appreciation rather than absorption, the way you might admire a technically brilliant painting without quite feeling it in your chest. That is not a failing of the film so much as an honest account of where I land with it.
What keeps it all afloat is that Prince himself is so relentlessly magnetic. He wears the camera's attention the way other performers wear a jacket, completely naturally and with enormous style. The staging is inventive, the sound is excellent, and the whole thing has a confidence to it that feels like an artist daring you to look away. Most of the time, you don't.
Three and a half stars. A bold, electric concert film that will thrill the faithful and, I suspect, leave most everyone else respectful but slightly restless. Which camp you fall into is probably something you already know.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1987 | Watched: 2026-09-03
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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