Green Book

Sometimes Hollywood films are formulaic because the formula simply works. That's the case with Green Book, which though outwardly about race, is really at heart an odd-couple-road movie. It is formulaic as it gets, but damn it, I liked it. I knew the ending way ahead of time yet it still brought a tear to my eye.

"Inspired" by a true story, Green Book details the unlikely friendship of Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a well-educated pianist, and Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a thick-necked bouncer at the Copacabana. In 1962, Ali needs a driver and bodyguard for a tour he's doing through the deep South, and Mortensen, out of work while the Copa is renovated, takes the job. The title comes from a guide published for black travelers in the South, listing places that would accept blacks, usually dingy hotels and chicken and rib shacks.

There is a lot to nitpick about this film. For example, we are led to believe that a man who would throw out drinking glasses because they touched the lips of black men would willingly go to work for one, even if the money was good. And Mortensen's racism evaporates pretty quickly. You see, all you need to do is get to know someone, then it's "Kumbaya."

Also, we are led to believe that a man as smart as Ali, who was born in the South, would so cavalierly put himself in danger. He visits a bar, only to get beat up, and then commits an indiscretion at a YMCA. One wonders why he hired a bodyguard in the first place.

But Green Book overcomes cliches--of course each man will teach the other about life--and is entertaining. Director and co-writer Peter Farrelly, who with his brother Bobby gave us the classic comedies Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin, knows what to do--make it funny. When I saw that Green Book was nominated in the Best Comedy category for the Golden Globes I thought WTF? But the film is consistently funny, with Mortensen as the clown and Ali as the straight man.

I don't think I've ever seen Mortensen do comedy before, and he's fun to watch as he tackles a standard cliche--the Italian tough guy. He speaks in dems and doses, and solves problems with his fists, but Mortensen gives him a cuddly side so that you can't help but like him (as Ali ends up doing). Ali is a great foil, as he puts up with Mortensen's bad habits, like pissing in the woods and eating like a machine, but he loosens up eventually, admitting he likes Chubby Checker and Kentucky Fried Chicken. But when Mortensen throws his cup out the window of the car, we get the classic shot of the car moving in reverse, with Mortensen reaching out of the open door to retrieve it.

As for the racial overtones, this is one of those films that acts likes this is all in the past. An audience can watch Ali being refused a place in the dining room of a place he is headlining (this happened to Sammy Davis Jr. all the time) and think to themselves, thank god that's over with. But it's only shifted to different forms. In a film like BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee reminds us that racism is still with us, only is subtler (and sometimes not so subtle) ways.

Green Book is a feel-good movie about a horrible era in history, which seems like a contradiction, but it succeeds. I doubt much of the details are true--Shirley's family has said that Shirley never considered Tony a friend--but why let facts get in the way of a good story?