Review: Green Book

Green Book (12A)

USA 2018 130 mins  Dir: Peter Farrelly  Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini

There’s some truly shameful stereotyping in this film, which ought to have the appropriate lobby groups fomenting a Twitterstorm of outrage. Yep, Viggo Mortensen’s Italian-American from the Bronx is depicted as a mouthy, uncouth, philistine, baseball-obsessed bruiser whose chums are dodgy wiseguy types and whose diet consists mostly of pizza or spaghetti and meatballs wolfed down with exceptionally poor table manners. But for the most part, this is another of those movies about racism whose function is primarily to make white folks feel good about themselves.

It’s 1962 and genial, casually racist nightclub bouncer Tony Vallelonga (Mortensen) – known universally as Tony Lip, on account of being “the best bullshit artist in the Bronx” – finds himself at a loose end and applies for a temporary job as a chauffeur. Naturally, he’s surprised to learn that his prospective employer is refined, well-dressed and somewhat prissy black concert pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Ali), who resides in a luxurious apartment above Carnegie Hall. Tony gets the job because Don recognises that his “innate ability to handle trouble” could come in handy during his lengthy upcoming concert tour of the Deep South. Armed with a copy of the Negro Motorists’ Green Book (an actual publication, “for vacation without aggravation” in the segregated South), this classic odd couple take off from Manhattan, with the other two white members of Don’s trio following behind, for a mismatched buddy road comedy that proves every bit as predictable as you might anticipate.

Does this sanitised replay of the Driving Miss Daisy formula really deserve five Oscar nominations? Of course it doesn’t. But the fact that Mortensen has been nominated for Best Actor while Ali had to settle for a Best Supporting Actor nod tells you everything you need to know about whose story is really being told in There’s Something About Mary co-director Peter Farrelly’s crowd-pleasing slice of formulaic feelgoodery, which was written by Vallelonga’s son.

Although Tony helps strait-laced Don to lighten up a bit by introducing him to the joys of fried chicken and the music of Sam Cooke, Little Richard and Aretha Franklin (“My world is way blacker than yours,” he asserts in one of the film’s more amusing exchanges), it’s hard to rebut the charge that Don’s real role here is that of the ‘magical negro’ who leads his ‘white saviour’ partner on a heart-warming journey into wokeness (and correct diction). Hell, he even improves Tony’s relationship by doing the Cyrano thing when he dictates and corrects the inarticulate slob’s letters home to the missus (“There are two Ts in ‘bullshitter'”). There are also aspects of Don’s life, best not revealed here to avoid spoilers, that a less mainstream film might have explored more deeply.

If you can get over that, and the fact that Shirley’s family have condemned this alleged true story colourfully as a “symphony of lies”, it gets the job done efficiently enough. Mortensen’s performance is a tad broad, in keeping with the way the character is written, while Ali is a little more subtle as the stoical Don, whose fleeting grimace betrays his true feelings about the more well-meaning of his multiple humiliations. If the ending seems unduly familiar, by the way, that may be because it’s bizarrely reminiscent of that of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.