GREEN BOOK (2018)

Fact-suggested* story about classically-trained ‘Pop’/Jazz pianist Don Shirley and his tough-guy chauffeur on a two-month tour down South. The gimmick: Shirley/Black; Driver/Italian WiseGuy; and ‘Jim Crow’ attitudes alive & well in 1962. (A computer program could have fleshed this out.) So . . . A Road Movie (No Problem); A Buddy Pic (No Problem); an Odd Couple knock-off (No Problem) . . . or would be, if script & direction didn’t make this pair not just A Odd Couple, but THE Odd Couple. As in Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE; with Mahershala Ali’s pianist a prissy, prickly Felix Unger type who needs to warm up to regular people (especially ‘his own kind’) and Viggo Mortensen’s vulgarian driver offering street wisdom while acquiring a bit of class & polish as their wary relationship evolves, via crises overcome, into real friendship; a race/relationship story that congratulates its audience on their tolerance. Not really much to ask fifty years after the fact, even less when you add in a distancing period look that, under director Peter Farrelly, feels more ‘curated’ than lived in. Mortensen suffers under a bad dye job for much of the film (his hair turns noticeably lighter in the last act), but has an infectiously good time displaying an extra 30 pounds in white underwear. And Ali gets to shift into Award Mode on his showy ‘Where do I fit in, anyway?’ arioso. They’re both fine, the movie’s fine, the sentiments fine, but the film may be most useful as a mnemonic for ‘anodyne.’

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Apparently, relatives of the late Don Shirley have taken issue with . . . well, with just about everything. But that’s the way with Bio-Pics, they're fictional. And typical of the form, the one thing that always turns out to be 100% true is the most unlikely moment. Here, the severe Christmas snowstorm that blankets the NorthEast as they try to drive home for the holidays. Turns out, this really happened; half a foot on the ground of NYC in 1962. Sweet.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Right before the drive North, Shirley shows off his stuff (and new-found humanity) in a New Orleans Jazz Club/Restaurant where he first wows the crowd with a spontaneous (if abridged) performance of Chopin’s ‘Winter Winds’ Etude before joining the house-band to display some serious ‘jazz chops.’ For a change, the filmmakers don’t make some ratty old upright sound like a Steinway Grand, but let us hear Shirley's impressive technique do battle with a crummy instrument. Just the sort of attention to detail & verisimilitude generally missing here.