Green Book

Green Book

A fun fact about me is that I'm a very part-time AFI employee, which means I was able to go to the TLC Chinese Theater to see Green Book this past weekend thanks to the AFI Film Festival. This was my first time getting to do anything related to both a film festival and the Chinese Theater, the latter of which I've only seen the outside of and have ridden the Disney World version of.

The tagline "Inspired by a true friendship" is a perfect representation of this wholesome little crowd pleaser, which is why it's very shocking when it's revealed that gross-out comedy mastermind Peter Farrelly wrote and directed it. While it's certainly not as overt as Dumb and Dumber or There's Something About Mary (both of which I love dearly), there's still some surprisingly good laughs supplied by Viggo Mortensen's food-loving, foul-mouthed, Italian-American character, who is a delight to watch. Mahershala Ali represents the more dramatic side of the story (though he still gets a few laughs in there), about a white man driving a black pianist through the deep south.

The story itself is where the movie starts to feel a little antiquated. It's basically just a reverse Driving Miss Daisy, and Driving Miss Daisy, which came out in 1989 (the same year as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing) also felt a little antiquated. Green Book (which came out the same year as Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman) has a tendency to dip into the "Black people and white people are different!" cliches, which can feel a little condescending, if not a little white savior-y. Sure, Ali's character deals with prejudice throughout the movie, but it all sort of feels like a way of getting white people in the audience to go "Oh, I'm good because I'm not like them!" which isn't exactly what I'd call "progress." If it had come out 40 years ago it might've made more of an impact, but in the current social climate BlacKkKlansman is a much more relevant wake-up call.

If you're looking for a simple, light movie that has evenly balanced comedy and drama, you're gonna love this movie. If you're more of a cinephile and want to see something new or inspired, this doesn't do any of that, but it sill features good performances from Mortensen, Ali, and Linda Cardellini, who will always be Lindsay Weir from Freaks and Geeks to me.