Review: Green Book

Set in America in the 1960s, Viggo Mortensen stars as Tony Vallelonga, a beefy nightclub bouncer who finds himself somewhat between jobs. He gets an offer from African-American classical musician Dr. Shirley (Mahershala Ali) to act as his chauffeur and personal assistant for a two-month tour of the Southern states of America. Yeah. A black man, in the South, during the 60s. At first, Tony refuses, not wanting to wait on anyone hand and foot, let alone a black man. However, the costs of needing to support his wife (Linda Cardellini) and family sees the rather uncouth, uncivilised ‘Tony Lip’ agreeing to the paid gig. They quickly and frequently get on each other’s nerves; Tony never shuts up, the Doctor is uptight and humourless. It’s a reverse “Driving Miss Daisy”, basically.

 

People tend to think the Academy Awards get the Best Picture wrong almost every year, it seems. My favourite film of the year quite often isn’t nominated, so I get it. I agree with general retrospective consensus that “Ordinary People” shouldn’t have won Best Picture for its year, for instance. However, as much as I admire “Raging Bull” as a terrific (if ugly) film, I would’ve given Best Picture to either “The Blues Brothers”, “The Elephant Man”, or “The Empire Strikes Back”, not the Redford or Scorsese films. Only one of my choices was even nominated. So for the most part, it is what it is with the Oscars. You can’t really worry about it too much, or else you’ll drive yourself crazy. From time to time though, Oscar gets it really really wrong. I’m lookin’ at you “Chariots of Fire”, “Titanic”, and (especially) “Crash”. Well now, this misguidedly old-fashioned and just plain lousy 2018 ‘based on a true story’ drama from director Peter Farrelly (Yeah, one of the “Dumb and Dumber” guys) can be added to the list of Oscar’s biggest Best Picture mistakes. Scripted by Farrelly alongside Nick Vallelonga (son of one of the subjects) and Brian Hayes Currie (mostly a bit actor, including a few Farrelly Brothers films), this borderline “Driving Miss Daisy” might just be the first time in the history of anything ever where I’m likely on the same page with Spike Lee. Oh, I bet he hates this one, and not just because it won over his own film “BlacKKKlansman” (which I didn’t much like either).

 

The performances are the best thing here, and none of them are memorable, all of them are hampered by the caricatured script and a filmmaker better suited to comedy. A beer-bellied Viggo Mortensen deserves credit for his abilities as a chameleon actor at the very least. He tries really, really hard here to turn his Tony ‘Lip’ Vallelonga doesn’t allow the actor to go beneath surface-level. It’s a solid performance, just not a very interesting one, and it simply isn’t the actor’s fault. The somehow Oscar-winning script sucks, forcing Mortensen to play a loud ‘bull in a china shop’ for much of the film’s duration. At first Mortensen is kind of fun and lively, but it’s not particularly enthralling to watch after about 15 minutes or so. It wears thin, because the role is thin.

 

Mahershala Ali won his second acting Oscar for his Supporting role as cultured, genteel African-American musician Dr. Shirley. And this time around, he didn’t deserve the accolade in the slightest. Again, the script is awful, but the actor is far too mannered and forced in the part. He’s actually annoying, snobbish, and greatly unlikeable. Why is he always on Tony’s case? You hired the guy knowing who and what he was to begin with, and now you’re trying to change him to better suit you? What an unlikeable snob, he was perfectly happy to turn the gig down so you could hire someone better, but you hired Tony. I just didn’t get this guy’s attitude. I also didn’t believe for one second that Dr. Shirley, no matter how cultured and classical a musician he was, wouldn’t know about popular African-American musicians and their songs, like Chubby Checker and Little Richard. If it’s true, the filmmakers and actor (who was terrific in “Moonlight”, which did deserve its accolades) didn’t convince me, and if they didn’t convince me, it doesn’t matter if it’s true. Sadly, as this film is essentially “Driving Miss Daisy” (a film that, sorry Spike, I like more than “Do the Right Thing”) meets road movie, these two characters are pretty much all we get for the bulk of the film. Linda Cardellini is gorgeous and likeable as always, but barely in the film, playing the stock-standard wife-at-home part.

 

I think the biggest problem here is Mr. Farrelly. The co-writer/director is better suited to comedy, and I think it’s likely at his feet one can put the blame for this superficial, sometimes broadly comedic take on material that I don’t think ought to have been treated in this one-note, surface-level way. In fact, in Farrelly’s hands it feels like he’s making it into a joke: An uncouth white chauffeur drives a cultured black man through the South. If you didn’t know it was based on a true story, Farrelly and co. wouldn’t convince you of it here. A lot of people rolled their eyes at what they perceived as another ‘white saviour’ story here. Generally my take is if it happened that way it happened that way. If it will help get an audience into the picture who would benefit from the lessons being taught it’s fine too. Here I couldn’t even focus enough on that to make a judgement because I was too busy noticing how caricatured and clichéd it is, and how much of a snooty prick the doctor is (Even to other African-Americans). And don’t even get me started on the two scenes involving fried chicken. What the hell? Also, it would appear that despite Dr. Shirley being either gay or bisexual, neither the film nor Mortensen’s character has anything to say about the issue of homosexuality. It’s the 60s, he’s an uber-macho Italian-American…the guy’s clearly got opinions on it, right? He’d have to have opinions on the matter. Well, none that are shared in this rather disinterested film.

 

There’s a few fleeting moments where it almost has some weight to it, but those are fleeting and few nonetheless. This subject matter deserved better, so I’m gonna come down a bit harsh in my rating of the film as a result. Why on Earth did an actor as seemingly intelligent as Mahershala Ali sign on for this outdated bullshit? I really am gobsmacked, especially since members of Dr. Shirley’s family have claimed this version of events to be quite inaccurate. They say they weren’t contacted until after the film was made, the filmmakers say they weren’t aware of the family’s existence until then. Only the family of the white guy were involved in the production. I think since the story is being told by Vallelonga Jr., even if he did get to meet Dr. Shirley himself, it still slants things, as well as narrowing things (and I’m not just talking about the fact that the tour has been reduced from an entire year to several months in this version of the supposedly truthful story). Involving the doctor’s family would’ve helped a heck of a lot I think. Vallelonga claims Dr. Shirley advised him to tell the story from his own discussions with his father and Shirley over the years before the doctor’s death. Perhaps this is true (The doctor’s family question whether he and his driver were even really friends). I just didn’t find this film very convincing at all. The only convincing thing about the whole film would be the production values. It’s a good-looking load of nonsense.

 

Just because a film takes place at an earlier time, does not mean the film itself should be outdated. This is an unacceptably old-fashioned treatment of a potentially interesting story. It’s thin, caricatured, broadly acted, and largely unconvincing, leaving some very fine actors utterly helpless. It’s not an incompetently made film from a technical standpoint I suppose. I just don’t think Peter Farrelly was the right man for the job. The film ends up a rather useless film likely to please few. I guess Academy voters disagree, but I thought this one was rather lousy and misguided. It’s narrowly better than the same year’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “The Favourite”, but that’s it. It won the Oscar because racism sucks. It sure does suck, but so does giving a pretty poor film the Best Picture award when you could’ve easily given it to “Black Panther” (Not my favourite film of the year, but certainly a solid one). Hell, even “BlacKKKlansman” was better than this, and that film was pretty mediocre too. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that this replaces “Crash” as the worst Best Picture Oscar winner to date. The first 15 minutes aren’t bad, the rest…yikes. That revolting sitcom fantasy happy ending can particularly GTFO.

 

Rating: D+