Unfortunately amoung naysayers the highly entertaining Green Book has gotten a bad rap. In certain critic circles it has been reduced to a misguided artifice that boosts debate on the unnecessary presence of a white savior. It seems the unsettling nature of a long-standing racist white man having a changeover and helping out his black brother, even in the service of a comedy, or perhaps especially in the service of a comedy, is, to some, going over the line of good taste.
Inserting farcical elements inherently not meant to completely bear the scrutiny of plausibility does indeed potentially present problems of tone shifts. Making historical points about a matter as important as racial tensions in the early 1960s and fancying it up with a few laughs on the side is admittedly additionally risky territory, even before we add fried chicken plot points (don’t ask).
Yet Green Book’s biggest success is exactly its effortlessly sliding back and forth between dramatic social criticism of an era steeped in racial bigotry, and the comedic lampooning of opposite archetypes. Tony Lip (an engrossing and hilarious Viggo Mortensen), a streetwise Italian-American hustler, takes a job chauffeuring for Dr.Don Shirley, a rather dandy black jazz musician played with aplomb and sensitivity by Academy Award-winner Mahershala Ali.
The two prepare to tour The South, so the tough Tony is hired as much as a protector as a driver. Racism both subtle and blatant follows them from town to town. In one hotel Dr. Shirley is denied seating for dinner in the very room he will soon play that night. The dramatic turns as they avoid–and more often thwart–the prejudice, are mostly convincing, even if the comedy of their interactions is never far behind.
It’s a match made to rival all the buddy movies over the years that thrive on the banter of odd couples. Oscar and Felix are reimagined here as a contemporary version of In The Heat of the Night with a comic twist that you’ll either love or resist. The talented Linda Cardellini plays Tony’s wife, who adds to the blue-collar Italian-American 1960s family vibe, a milieu this writer can vouch from experience that Peter Farrelly absolutely nails. Farrelly, of There’s Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber fame, does justice to material that feels light years away from those films.