Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
Directed by Bruce Beresford
The story of an old Jewish widow named Daisy Werthan and her relationship with her black chauffeur, Hoke. From an initial mere work relationship grew in 25 years a strong friendship between the two very different characters, in a time when those types of relationships were shunned.
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What critics compared Driving Miss Daisy to
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.”
It’s no surprise that a Hollywood remake is in the works; this is thoroughly commercial moviemaking that calls to mind an array of high-concept crowd-pleasers, including “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Scent of a Woman.”
The two generate such fun and good will in this Gallic " Driving Miss Daisy " (or " Trading Places ," " Scent of a Woman ," ad nauseam) that you can almost forgive the film's breezy racial stereotyping, cheap comedy and phony-baloney attitudes toward art, culture, class, and quadriplegia.
It's easy to make a cynical diagram of Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano's The Intouchables: Take the basic premise of Driving Miss Daisy and move it to contemporary Paris.
The premise of the French film "The Intouchables" is like a mash-up of " The King's Speech " and " Driving Miss Daisy ," with a dose of "Trading Places" for good measure.
In other words, this is "Pushing Mr. Philippe," a movie to be placed somewhere on the scale between "Driving Miss Daisy" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
Crowding the screen and attempting to raid every scene are a Who's Who of celebrity cut-ups: Tom Cruise as a megalomaniac producer whose every utterance is a gross sexual reference; Matthew McConaughey as an agent who will literally cross the jungle to get his client a good deal and a contractually mandated TiVo; Steve Coogan as a twit Brit director with delusions of Blair Witch woodlands terror; Tobey Maguire as a gay priest in one of the four hilarious fake trailers that open the movie and set the tone; and Danny McBride as a pyro expert who lives to blow things up, yet who lost a finger on the set of Driving Miss Daisy .
"It" comic actor Danny McBride plays the special effects man, who once lost a finger on Driving Miss Daisy .
(The movie also features a dumb, self-referential joke, in which Miles, giving Iris a quick movie-music tutorial as the two browse the racks of a DVD store, grabs a copy of "Driving Miss Daisy" and burbles on about its terrific score by "Hans.")
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This is not another Driving Miss Daisy-ish story of good people in power lifting up the poor people who work for them; Cuarón is too smart for that.
The Help, written and directed by Tate Taylor from the novel by Kathryn Stockett, belongs to the Driving Miss Daisy tradition of feel-good fables about black-white relations in America, movies in which institutional racism takes a backseat to the personal enlightenment of one white character.
Based on the bestest-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help joins Glory , Cry Freedom , Driving Miss Daisy , and many other noble adaptations in filtering the black experience through the white experience, but credit Stockett (and the film) for conceiving a sneaky end-around.
Like Driving Miss Daisy, it paints a pessimistic picture and then steadily brightens it.
Yes, it contains the kind of cathartic, crowd-pleasing moments we remember from “In the Heat of the Night,” “Driving Miss Daisy” and other Oscar-winners about a time when African Americans sat at the back of the bus and suffered the daily humiliation of drinking fountains and toilets “For Whites Only.”
“Driving Miss Daisy,” along with “Glory” that same year, vaulted Morgan Freeman into stardom at the age of 52, beginning a 20-year run of screen roles that is, in my estimation, unmatched by any other actor in the modern era: “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “Unforgiven,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Se7en,” “Kiss the Girls,” “Amistad,” “Deep Impact” (portraying a black American president), “Bruce Almighty” (playing God, no less), “Million Dollar Baby,” “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “Invictus.”
For obvious reasons, the beleaguered Max is not too thrilled doing the forced "Driving Miss Daisy" gig for this well-dressed murderer.
Sort of a "Driving Miss Daisy" meets "Last Samurai."
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As structured by screenwriter David Seidler, “The King’s Speech’’ is essentially “Driving Miss Daisy’’ with a royalist veneer, a drama about a friendship that crosses social boundaries as it grows and deepens over the years.
This pernicious misrepresentation of reality is not true when it comes to racism, despite what “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Green Book” might want us to believe.