Yes & Piano

Green Book
Opposites React
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 130 min

Need a hug? A good laugh? A reason to feel good about humanity, and how we can overcome our differences to find common ground?  Or how about a chance to smile, like endlessly?  You can have all of this AND MORE by watching the candy-colored Hallmark movie-esque, but always fabulous Green Book – easily one of my favorite movies 2018.

How is this so?  It’s a serious subjected movie directed by There’s Something Dumb and Dumber About Kingpin‘s Peter Farrelly (leaving his brother Bobby at home).  The first act is filled with more New York-Italian stereotypes than if Chef Boyardee and Mama Celeste starred in a Ragu commercial.  Whatdamattawitchu???  Once we leave the stereotypes behind in New Yawk, and meathead Viggo Mortensen starts driving sophisticated musician Mahershala Ali around the deep south, in a time when African-American men know better than to travel down there, does the film’s magic really begin.  And once that magic starts – it never stops, casting some sort of spell on you until it’s time to get up and go home!

Wow – I love this movie.  I really do.  It’s truly a ‘feel-good’ flick, and one we really need right now.  And it’s all true!  Mortensen plays a bouncer named Tony Vallelonga (who later became an actor himself, Tony Lip, with parts in Goodfellas, The Sopranos, Donnie Brasco and a slew of other gangster related movies) who was hired to drive and look after Ali’s classical pianist Don Shirley on his concert tour thru the Dirty South.  The ‘green book’ in the title is an actual guidebook African-Americans would use so they would know where they could stay overnight, as many places were not so friendly with their ‘whites only’ policies.  And while race is always an issue in the film, it doesn’t over-envelope the proceedings like you think it would.  And even when Tony and Don run afoul of locals along the way, it never goes too far, keeping things nice and light.  Light is good.  You want dark, watch Mississippi Burning.  Want a movie where a white guy sells the virtues of fried chicken on a black guy?  Who doesn’t?  This movie is finger-licking AWESOME!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Book opens today in limited release and everywhere next week

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…