Peter Farrelly
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Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
Directed by Bruce Beresford
influenced Green Book (2018)
Themes Plot Characters
This misjudgment fails to reverse the lachrymose gimmick of Driving Miss Daisy.
An old-fashioned racial mash-up of Driving Miss Daisy and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Green Book is an exceedingly pleasant two-hander that soars off the pinball chemistry of stars Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.
Working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Brian Hayes Currie and Nick Vallelonga (son of Tony), Farrelly plays the thing as a buddy road trip/love story—equal parts Driving Miss Daisy, Pygmalion and The Odd Couple—in which the sophisticated, erudite Shirley puts up with Tony “Lip,” a crass, two-fisted galoot who can barely string together a sentence but rarely needs to as a former bouncer at New York’s legendary Copacabana nightclub.
At other times we can see them as the two very different people in Driving Miss Daisy.
Coming to this review of Green Book days into the film’s theatrical release and months after its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, you've likely heard about some of the problems Peter Farrelly’s inversion of Driving Miss Daisy poses to the enlightened critic.
Because the white guy, an erstwhile nightclub bouncer named Frank Anthony Vallelonga and known as Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), is behind the wheel of a car while the black guy, the pianist and composer Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), rides in back, “Green Book” seems to invite comparison to “Driving Miss Daisy.”
Unlike say the Farrelly Brothers movie “Shallow Hal,” which cast Gwyneth Paltrow as the inner beauty of a 300-pound woman that her shallow paramour (Jack Black) sees after being hypnotized, Kohn and Silverstein never allow us to see what Renee glimpses when she stares at her reflection.
We don’t see what Renee thinks she sees (presumably to avoid the pitfalls of something like Shallow Hal), but whatever it is, it gives her the confidence that’s long eluded her – to go for the guys she likes and the job she wants and to be her best self, etc.
I Feel Pretty—it has nothing to do with the West Side Story number of that name—is a high-concept comedy, that could be called a more inward-facing semi-remake of the Jack Black comedy Shallow Hal.
This conceit, a mish-mash/role reversal of the plot from the equally problematic 2001 comedy Shallow Hal, is rife with holes.
I Feel Pretty uses that entry point for its Shallow Hal-like premise: after wishing that she could be pretty on a stormy night, Renee falls off her SoulCycle bike and wakes up to see the supermodel version of herself staring back at her.
The confident directorial debuts of screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (2016's " How to Be Single "), the film takes a wish-fulfillment fantasythink "Big" (which this film rather wonderfully references) crossed with an inverted "Shallow Hal"and wisely sidesteps all of the potentially hypocritical traps and misguided double standards into which it easily could have fallen.
Initially, the film seems doomed to be an annoying “Driving Miss Daisy” spin on “The Odd Couple.”
The movie borrows its tropes, and its comedy, from “The Odd Couple,” but its mismatch sometimes turns earnest, as when Don reproaches Tony for staying outside a mansion and playing craps with other—black—drivers. (“They didn’t have a choice whether to be inside or out; you did”).
Together, the two create a magical chemistry on screen with buddy comedy reminiscent of Gene Saks’ “The Odd Couple” (1968), making Ali the tidy Felix to Mortensen’s uncouth Oscar.
“Green Book” (★★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; in select cities Friday including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington and Chicago; nationwide Nov. 21) offers shades of “The Odd Couple,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and a race-flipped “Driving Miss Daisy.”
The film is a bit like “The Odd Couple” joined to a 21st century version of “Driving Miss Daisy,” with superior acting by two of today’s top actors — Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali — sealing the bargain.
The Defiant Ones (1958)
Directed by Stanley Kramer
influenced Green Book (2018)
Characters Themes Plot
At times they remind us of the squabbling runaway convicts in The Defiant Ones (1958).
Similar figures can be identified in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Defiant Ones, where Sidney Poitier’s characters go to unreasonable lengths to console and save bigoted white folk, assuring the addressed (white) viewer that no matter how hateful their actions, no matter how unspeakable the history of their country’s racism, the established order will not come under threat.
But its pedigree is slightly different, reaching back through the Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor comedies of the 1970s to “The Defiant Ones” in 1958, which starred Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as runaway convicts in the Jim Crow South.
If you can imagine a mash-up of “Driving Miss Daisy” with “The Defiant Ones,” you’ll have some idea of what “Green Book” is like.
Much like The Help (2011), this movie condemns racism as if it’s an easy fix that was solved long ago and not an ongoing complicated struggle.
A play-it-safe crowd-pleaser in the family-friendly vein of “Hidden Figures” and “The Help” — movies that condemn racism as if the problem were already solved rather than still alive and well — “Green Book” may as well be “Driving Miss Daisy” in reverse, focusing on the inevitable fireworks when an elegant black man hires an ill-mannered guy from the Bronx to drive him around the South.
I walked out of “Green Book” thinking I had just seen one of the biggest eventual hits of TIFF—this movie has what I would call the “10th Best Picture Nominee” potential a la “The Blind Side” and “ The Help ” in that it’s wildly crowdpleasing with the kind of easy-to-swallow message that a lot of critics will consider pandering and problematic while mainstream America eats it up.
Those who saw powerful character catharsis in The Help but found distasteful its scene of shit literally served to racists?
Recent films such as Loving and Hidden Figures have explored falsehoods as well as expectations, but films like The Help can also minimize impact by making “casual racism” seem quaint and old-fashioned, most often when the lead character is white.
Better, it oftentimes feels authentic and real, Farrelly rarely pandering to the audience in overtly sentimental or mawkish ways that could transform this story into a distaff Driving Miss Daisy meets The Help variation.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Directed by Norman Jewison
influenced Green Book (2018)
Dialogue Themes
And when they do speak -- Tony sounding like an extra from “The Sopranos,” Dr. Shirley eloquently suggesting “In the Heat of the Night”-era Sidney Poitier -- you can feel your pulse quicken.
You’d be forgiven if watching this film you were reminded of films like In the Heat of the Night or Driving Miss Daisy , which features none of the hard edges one would expect from modern explorations of race relations during the Civil Rights Era.
For, the Oscar winning film that “Green Book” really hearkens back to is from decades earlier, the 1967 Best Picture winner, “In the Heat of the Night.”
The movie’s predictability is a key to its appeal, in much the same way that the jaunty playing-out of racial stereotypes was integral to the appeal of “Green Book,” the most recent example of a movie that rejiggered the “Driving Miss Daisy” formula for a brotherhood-of-man vibe.
In other words, this is the Green Book of disability films, right down to the examination of the relationship barriers between disabled and able-bodied people.
However, this American version (which was wrangled away for distribution by STX Entertainment from The Weinstein Company after it crashed and burned in ignominy last year) is more likely to be compared with a more recent release of dubious racial connotations: Green Book.
Green Book , which tilled similar ground less than three months ago, was practically a primer on what we could expect from The Upside .
Just a few months after Green Book, here comes another story of the friendship between two very different men, one white and one black.
With its emphasis on judging people by their inner beauty instead of by physical appearance, Shallow Hal reminded me of a 1945 romantic fantasy entitled The Enchanted Cottage.
Green Book has echoes of other films such as Driving Miss Daisy, In the Heat of the Night, Hidden Figures, The Help and The Blind Side, among those that come to mind.
I walked out of “Green Book” thinking I had just seen one of the biggest eventual hits of TIFF—this movie has what I would call the “10th Best Picture Nominee” potential a la “The Blind Side” and “ The Help ” in that it’s wildly crowdpleasing with the kind of easy-to-swallow message that a lot of critics will consider pandering and problematic while mainstream America eats it up.
Much like other mainstream movies that depict racism that it’ll be inevitably compared to like The Blind Side and The Help, Green Book attempts to showcase its subject matter in a sugar-coated manner as if times weren’t that rough for African-Americans back then.
A well intentioned and certainly entertaining crowd pleaser, Green Book belongs to the same cinematic pedigree as films like Driving Miss Daisy, The Help, and The Blind Side; movies where a white person and a black person will reach a common form of human understanding during times of racial segregation or hardship.
In the ignoble tradition of “Crash,” “The Blind Side” and “The Help,” here’s a movie that purports to explore racism in America while coddling fragile white viewers at the expense of its characters of color.
If you’re looking for the early favorite for the audience award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, (a prize “Green Book” took with it all the way to Oscar glory) look no further than the riveting legal drama “Just Mercy” based on the book of the same name by Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson.
And although the movie overall handles issues of race and class with less complexity than the also-currently-in-theaters Clemency, if we still have to tell stories that remind white people that racism is bad, actually, at least they’re presented with more grace and effectiveness than Green Book or The Best of Enemies.
However, it did when the audience award at the Chicago International Film Festival and seems to be adored for the same reasons as last year’s Green Book, so maybe it’s your 2019 Best Picture.
There’s been buzz around Toronto that Just Mercy is being positioned as the successor to Green Book, and while for a lot of film lovers that’s not exactly great praise, Cretton’s film is absolutely less problematic and more worthy of awards attention than this year’s Best Picture winner.
Likely to please the same demographic who awarded Green Book the Best Picture Oscar at the most recent Academy Awards, Destin Daniel Cretton’s feature- his fourth overall – can be added to the pile of “true life stories whose real power and emotion lies in the real events, not the film itself”.
There are several scenes where Bullock’s facial reactions reminded me of Jim Carrey in scenes from Dumb & Dumber and Liar Liar .
Many will draw parallels between “Belfast” and “Roma,” but Branagh’s work has more popcorn appeal, which is why it has a better shot at Best Picture, unlike “Roma” which was too arthouse for the middle-of-the-road Academy, which chose “Green Book” instead.
But mostly “Belfast” will be fated to divide because after winning the Toronto International Film Festival audience award, it is an assumed best picture frontrunner, putting it in the company of possible company of “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The King’s Speech,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Nomadland,” and, infamously, “Green Book.”
It may be far from my favourite of the year, but this will inevitably be the film to beat come awards season, and I’m just glad it’s this kind of wholesome Oscar bait rather than another Green Book.
Similar figures can be identified in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Defiant Ones, where Sidney Poitier’s characters go to unreasonable lengths to console and save bigoted white folk, assuring the addressed (white) viewer that no matter how hateful their actions, no matter how unspeakable the history of their country’s racism, the established order will not come under threat.
The new movie “Green Book” sets up, with a pristine precision, a scenario that was already ridiculous when it was presented in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” more than half a century ago: the acceptance by white people of a black protagonist whose talents and achievements are exceptional, whose manners are elegant, whose record is spotless, and whose résumé and connections are stamped “high-class.”
Let's just say they try to outdo the spirit of John Waters's "Pink Flamingos."
I can’t pile that sort of praise on Inside Out myself, alas; compared to other movies starring Saturday Night Live alumni that take place inside the human mind and/or body and end on a tear-jerking note, I’m not even sure it beats Osmosis Jones, which was one of my favorite animated films around the turn of the millennium.
The Farrelly brothers went after an evil virus in "Osmosis Jones."
This isn't the first film to depict small beings inside others (beyond the likes of "Fantastic Voyage" and any number of demonic possession flicks there's been "Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex" (or at least one segment of that Woody Allen film), "Meet Dave" and "Osmosis Jones," among a few others).
Green Book marks the flying-solo debut of director Peter Farrelly, best known for the yucky, gross-out, bro-fest comedies he made with his brother, Bobby—Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary.
Farrelly has long been a master of the comedic road trip (see Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary), but Green Book expands human interactions beyond the bizarre and grotesque.
Now that that’s off my chest, let me tell you about a crowd-pleasing odd-couple comedy directed by Peter Farrelly, who usually works with his brother Bobby on movies such as Shallow Hal, There's Something About Mary, and Dumb and Dumber To. Green Book stars Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali in a story about a trip through the American South taken by Ali’s Dr. Don Shirley, an accomplished pianist, and Mortensen's Tony Vallelunga, a Bronx-based Italian-American with racial attitudes rooted in the 1950s.
Green Book is a big and promising departure for Peter Farrelly, co-writer and co-director (with brother Bobby) of raunch-fests including Dumb and Dumber, Me, Myself & Irene and There’s Something About Mary .
But pointing out that Mortensen and Ali are solid is what’s expected; the real surprise here is director Peter Farrelly, who’s best known for comedies like Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary.
It is the first solo release from director Peter Farrelly, who previously worked with his brother Bobby on the raucous comedies Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary .
In the tradition of Steve Martin's The Jerk, Carrey here plays a guy who just couldn't be any more stupid and not drown in a rainstorm.
If audiences are looking for something like that, they should go stream Mississippi Burning or American History X.
“Mississippi Burning” was one of the few films to get the dread factor right, with all those Klansmen names of Stuckey, Bailey, Townley, and Swilley and kicking off the acting careers of the likes of Michael Rooker, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Pruitt Taylor Vince as exceptionally creepy racists.
He found such a man in Tony “The Lip” Vallelonga, then a bouncer at the Copacabana, later a bit player in mafia-themed touchstones like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos.
The real Lip was so identifiably Italian-American, he later became an actor who appeared in “The Godfather,” “Goodfellas” and “The Sopranos.”
The real-life Tony was so colorful he starred as New York mob boss Carmine Lupertazzi on The Sopranos, and also appeared in The Godfather, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, The Pope of Greenwich Village and Donnie Brasco.
Set during the segregation days of 1962, Green Book is the story of an unlikely interracial friendship that solved America’s racism problem and, to quote Tina Fey’s Golden Globes opening monologue reference to Selma, “now everything’s fine.”
Even when the stories are more thoughtful about race than “Green Book,” in the films that are rapturously lauded with black protagonists in this century (“Selma”, “Ray,” “Hotel Rwanda” even this year’s “Blackkklansman”) we notice at the centre a black man who is not a (mere) common man of the people but a man who stands apart from his peers.