Graffiti Bridge

Lore & Background

The plot continues with The Kid, living a future life as an upbeat performer and co-owner of a club, Glam Slam, which was willed to him from Billy, who owned the First Avenue Club in the first film. Solitary and lovelorn, he spends his personal time composing songs, and writing letters to his deceased father. The other co-owner who was included in the will is Morris, his rival who now also owns his own club, Pandemonium, while desiring to control the other two clubs in the Seven Corners area, which are Melody Cool and the Clinton Club. Needing to pay the mayor of Seven Corners $10,000, Morris attempts to extort The Kid – by threatening to take full ownership of Glam Slam. Making matters more interesting is the arrival of Aura, an angel sent from Heaven to sway both Morris and The Kid into leading more righteous lives – while dealing with their attraction to her. As The Kid continues to resist him, Morris begins to embarrass him via performances with his band, to steal The Kid's customers. Losing clientele and having his club defamed by Morris's henchmen, The Kid decides to challenge Morris to a music battle for ownership of Glam Slam. After Aura gets hit by a car, the two rivals settle their dispute and join forces.

In Their Own Story

Graffiti Bridge received positive reviews from contemporary critics, who praised Prince's songwriting and the variety of the music while deeming it an improvement over 1988's Lovesexy. Time magazine hailed the record as a "groovable feast", while Q's Lloyd Bradley claimed it was "practically impossible to choose anything that doesn't deserve to be there. How long is it since that can honestly be said about a Prince album?" In Entertainment Weekly, Greg Sandow said the album was likely a "masterpiece" that found Prince rediscovering his ability to cover different styles effortlessly. Rolling Stone reviewer Paul Evans credited him for lending a "sharper focus", "harder groove", and emphasis on funk and rock rather than "the feckless genre dabbling" of albums such as Lovesexy and Around the World in a Day. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune called the album "a sprawling, wildly diffuse statement on love, sin, sex and salvation that ranks with his best work". At the end of 1990, Graffiti Bridge was voted the tenth best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop poll published by The Village Voice.

Reader's Guide

The film was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Prince), Worst Director (Prince), Worst Screenplay (Prince), and Worst New Star (Ingrid Chavez) at the 11th Golden Raspberry Awards. Despite media hype of it being the sequel to the massively successful Purple Rain, it was a commercial and critical failure and was included on several Worst of 1990 movie lists. Graffiti Bridge currently holds an 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 3.7/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 36 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating 'generally unfavorable' reviews. However, the corresponding original soundtrack received widespread critical acclaim with glowing reviews from Rolling Stone's Paul Evans, Entertainment Weekly's Greg Sandow, and the Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot, the latter stating that the album was 'a sprawling, wildly diffuse statement on love, sin, sex and salvation that ranks with his best work.'

Did You Know?

• The title Graffiti Bridge comes from a now torn-down bridge located in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, which was torn down in the early 1990s to make way for new construction.
• According to Terry Lewis, the film was originally a vehicle for The Time, but in the end the story got lost and it became a Prince picture.
• In 1991, Prince was quoted as saying: '(It was) one of the purest, most spiritual, uplifting things I've ever done. It was non-violent, positive and had no blatant sex scenes. Maybe it will take people 30 years to get it