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It’s pure formula, of course. Two men—one white, one black—from polar opposite backgrounds with wildly contrasting personalities get thrown together under unusual circumstances. They learn from each other, change each other for the better and discover that—guess what?—they’re not so different after all.

“Green Book” is all that and more: It also takes place while the two men are driving across the American South during 1962, so it contains multiple formulas at once. It’s the mismatched-buddy road trip movie with a message about race relations, arriving in theaters at the height of awards season and the holidays, just in time to make us all feel better about the world—or at least give us a brief glimmer of hope during this period of political and ideological division. As an added bonus, it also happens to have been inspired by a true story.

But damned if it doesn’t work beautifully for nearly the entirety of its two hour-plus running time. “Green Book” is the kind of old-fashioned filmmaking big studios just don’t offer anymore. It’s glossy and zippy, gliding along the surface of deeply emotional, complex issues while dipping down into them just enough to give us a taste of some actual substance.

And its enjoyability comes almost completely from its starring performances from an excellent Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali . Both actors imbue their roles with precision and pathos. They find nuance within their familiar types individually and share a spirited chemistry with each other. They are a joy to watch together from start to finish, even though you can tell from the beginning exactly how specific moments between them are going to play out by the end.

You may be surprised to learn that this conventional piece of classy, inspirational filmmaking comes from director and co-writer Peter Farrelly , a longtime standard bearer of lowbrow comedy alongside his brother, Bobby. It’s a rare opportunity for him to direct solo, and it may seem like a departure. But the Farrellys’ woefully underappreciated bowling comedy “ Kingpin ” features quite a few of the same sorts of opposites-on-a-road-trip themes, as well as the possibility for unexpected friendship. An underlying sweetness—and the need to be decent to others—quite frequently exists beneath the gross-out gags and bodily fluids that have been the brothers’ bread and butter for decades. And that’s certainly at the heart of “Green Book.”

In a racial flip of “ Driving Miss Daisy ,” nearly 30 years after that film won a handful of Oscars including best picture, “Green Book” features a white man serving as a chauffeur—and valet, and muscle, and all-around problem solver—to a black man. (That’s not to say the film is entirely free of icky white savior moments, but it does offer instances of Ali’s character rescuing Mortensen’s, as well.) The title comes from the travel guide of restaurants and motels blacks were allowed to frequent in the segregated South.

Mortensen’s chameleon-like abilities are on display here once more as he disappears into the role of Tony Vallelonga—or “Tony Lip,” as he’s best known among his fellow Italian-Americans in New York. (Tony’s son, Nick, co-wrote the vivid and affectionate script with Farrelly and Brian Hayes Currie .) A brash and affable lug of a guy with big appetites and an even bigger loyalty to his wife (a lovely Linda Cardellini ) and two young sons, Tony is content staying in the same section of the Bronx where he’s always lived. An ever-present cigarette dangles from his mouth as he mangles the English language. Working as a bouncer at the Copacabana nightclub and gambling here and there for extra cash, he remains just enough on the periphery of the mob to keep himself out of real danger. (In an early moment indicating his sense of right and wrong, he’d rather pawn his watch to make ends meet before Christmas than do a job for some fellas for easy money.)

But then, the possibility of employment comes his way that would allow him to provide real financial stability for his family, even though it would take him away from them for a couple of months. Ali’s Dr. Don Shirley, a world-class pianist, needs someone to drive him on a tour of cities across the Eastern Seaboard and the South, where he’ll perform in both concert halls and private homes. Shirley—or “ Doc ,” as Tony calls him—is everything Tony is not: educated, sophisticated, articulate, meticulous. And black. Tony may be a good guy, but he’s got some antiquated, misinformed ideas about African-Americans and more than a tinge of racism against them, as evidenced by his early reaction to a couple of plumbers working in his home. Clearly, all that is about to change.

Ali brings an elegance to the role but also a moving vulnerability. When we first see him in his ornately appointed apartment above Carnegie Hall, where he’s dressed in robes and jewels and he’s literally sitting on a throne above Tony to interview him for the job, it’s easy to assume he’s simply going to be condescending and persnickety. But Doc reveals shadings and complexity as the road trip progresses, and he hints at the inner torment that’s driven him to build a refined outer shell.

The main pleasure of “Green Book” comes from watching Tony and Doc banter as they make their way from town to town—trading small talk, getting to know each other and getting on each others’ nerves. Their distinct opinions on fried chicken and Little Richard , for example, defy traditional stereotypes. Quite often, their burgeoning friendship plays out exactly the way you expect it will. When Tony’s wife asks him to write her letters from the road, and he demurs out of embarrassment, you know it’s only a matter of time before Doc is helping him craft eloquent, romantic missives to send her.

But other scenes offer some surprises in the details through which they’re executed. This is especially true in the powerful piano performances (achieved with the help of a body double, although Ali’s graceful demeanor is convincing). They indicate the transformation occurring between the two men as well if not better than their dialogue, especially during the final show of the trip, where many of the movie’s ideas about race and identity wrap up in joyous, satisfying fashion. You may actually find yourself getting a bit choked up by the end, even though you’ve been on this journey countless times before.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film Credits

Green Book (2018)

Rated PG-13 for thematic content, language including racial epithets, smoking, some violence and suggestive material.

130 minutes

Viggo Mortensen as Tony Lip

Mahershala Ali as Don Shirley

Linda Cardellini as Dolores

Don Stark as Jules Podell

Sebastian Maniscalco as Johnny Venere

Tom Virtue as Morgan Anderson

Brian Stepanek as Graham Kindell

Joe Cortese as Joey Loscudo

• Peter Farrelly
• Nick Vallelonga
• Brian Hayes Currie

Cinematographer

• Sean Porter
• Patrick J. Don Vito
• Kris Bowers

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Green Book review – charming deep south road trip is worth taking

Strong performances from Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali highlight a broadly entertaining crowd-pleaser about racial division in the 1960s

T here are many pleasures to be had in Peter Farrelly’s new film Green Book , perhaps not a great surprise when one remembers the unabashed joys of his previous work from Dumb and Dumber to There’s Something About Mary to his underrated remakes of Fever Pitch and The Heartbreak Kid. But it’s more of a shock given that the material edges him into more serious-minded fare than usual in telling the true story behind the friendship of renowned pianist Donald Shirley and his driver Tony Lip.

It’s 1962 and Tony (Viggo Mortensen) is in need of employment as the club he works at undergoes renovations while Donald (Mahershala Ali) is in need of a driver to take him through the deep south for an upcoming tour. He’s aware of the troubles that he might face in different locations due to the colour of his skin and requires someone to act as both staff and protector. Tony isn’t an obvious choice, he’s as rude as Donald is refined and his views on race are problematic to say the least, but he carries with him the muscle that Donald is sure he’ll need and so the two set off.

It’s easy to discount the simplicity of Green Book in a way that many similarly and unfairly did when Hidden Figures broke out in 2016, sighing at the broad strokes used to tell a vital true story. But there’s a necessity in using a film of this scale to recreate a time not too long ago when black people were being regularly dehumanised and devalued in ways that were upheld by the law. Yes, this is entertainment pitched at a wide audience and is constructed in the most easily digestible way possible but it still serves a significant purpose to remind white audiences of the difficulties faced by those of colour.

Early in the film, we’re shown that, while glossily presented, Farrelly, writing with actor-producer Brian Hayes Currie and Tony Lip’s son Nick Vallelonga, won’t be sugarcoating tensions of the time. In the first few minutes we see Tony use racial slurs when describing two black men working in his home before throwing out the glasses they were drinking from, a startling scene that sets up a character we then automatically reject as a result. It’s clear we’re on the road to redemption but it’s a slow process and as patronising as it might seem to those woke enough to not need such hand-holding, it’s crucial for someone like Tony to see firsthand the indignities faced by Donald.

The film is named after the guide used by black travellers between the 30s and 60s to avoid places that could lead to further trouble and to recommend safe lodging, and over two hours, it’s fairly relentless in its depiction of the everyday humiliations forced upon a black man at that time. There are hotels Donald can’t stay at, times of day he can’t be out at, bathrooms he can’t use and while for some it might be comforting to position these situations as something of the past, there’s a bleak prescience given the increase in reported instances of race-based discrimination in the past year. It’s unavoidably enraging but ultimately there’s a charm to seeing the men get closer and to see Tony reject the repellent views he once had. It’s a crowd-pleaser that will play well to a wide audience, a quality that’s often slightly limiting for some of the issues we’re presented with. There’s a revelation of sorts halfway through the film that adds an extra layer to Donald’s character but it’s handled with kid gloves, the muted references to it feeling sanitised later in the film.

There’s clearly a more nuanced drama to be made from this story but given the scale, there’s still a lot here to praise. It’s fun to see Mortensen go all in with what could have gone disastrously: a full-blooded comic character, complete with a gut and a thick Italian-American accent. He’s better than the trailer suggests, the performance feeling less like an impression and more like the lived-in portrayal of a larger-than-life man. Ali’s natural elegance and poise make him a perfect choice for the role and, in a just world, his collection of natty suits would earn a best costume design nomination come January. There’s a great poignancy in watching a man so dignified suffer through the trials presented in front of him and Ali’s face is frequently heartbreaking, conveying the hurt, quiet fury and disappointment at how he’s perceived by much of white America. While Mortensen’s role is the showier of the two, Ali’s stays with us longer.

Farrelly, so used to orchestrating extreme audience reactions with his comedies, shows that he’s equally adept with not just the funnier moments in Green Book but the quieter dramatic beats as well. Right through to the feelgood Christmas-set finale, there’s something about the film that feels primed to be a hit and while its race-switched take on Driving Miss Daisy might seem oversimplified for more refined audiences, there’s an importance to preaching beyond the choir.

Green Book is showing at the Toronto film festival and will be released in the US on 21 November and in the UK on 8 February

• Toronto film festival 2018
• First look review
• Viggo Mortensen
• Mahershala Ali
• Drama films
• Comedy films

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clock This article was published more than  5 years ago

‘Green Book’ is the rare Hollywood crowd-pleaser that triumphs on all counts

The title of “Green Book” derives from a period when African Americans often traveled at their own risk, especially in the Jim Crow South. Unwelcome in many restaurants, hotels and other public establishments, they even faced death in “sundown” towns, where they were warned to get out before evening, or else. In response, a postal employee named Victor Hugo Green created a guide designed to “give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trips more enjoyable.” The Green Book was published for more than 30 years, finally ceasing publication in the late 1960s.

The pain, peril and murderous racism that made the Green Book a necessity of black life seems like unlikely fodder for a crowd-pleaser that plays like gangbusters. But “Green Book,” a spirited amalgam of buddy comedy, road movie, fish-out-of-water fable and accessible social history, is just that cinematic unicorn. As an inspiring and thoroughly entertaining chapter drawn from all-too-real life, it mixes authenticity and Hollywood schmaltz with ease that feels both relaxed and judiciously calibrated. Most winningly, “Green Book” puts two of the finest screen actors working today in a sexy turquoise Cadillac, letting them loose on a funny, swiftly-moving chamber piece bursting with heart, art and soul.

The actors in question are Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, who prove to be a superbly balanced team. Mortensen plays Tony “Lip” Vallelonga, a Bronx bouncer who in 1962 is making his living at a New York nightclub and trying to avoid working as muscle for the local mob. When he loses his job, he makes ends meet by putting his prodigious appetite to use in a hot dog-eating contest, which even he, being slightly dimwitted, realizes isn’t a sustainable model. Eventually, he answers a call from a Manhattan musician looking for a driver and shows up at his would-be employer’s Carnegie Hall address ready to take anything that pays.

What he finds is a man named Don Shirley (Ali), a supremely elegant pianist and composer who greets Tony draped in regal robes, then conducts the interview from what looks like an ancient Egyptian throne. Shirley, a favorite of Park Avenue and other well-heeled precincts, has booked some dates throughout the South in a tour that will end around Christmas. Although his distinctive brand of bespoke, classically infused jazz is popular with white audiences, he’s not taking any chances: He hires Tony to act both as chauffeur and protector should any difficulties, embarrassments or less-than-enjoyable circumstances arise.

The ensuing journey unfolds much as the audience might expect: The slovenly, tough-talkin’ Tony and the quiet, impeccably mannered “Dr. Shirley” almost immediately begin to bicker about everything from the music Tony listens to in the car to the cigarettes he smokes between his incessant chatter. But “Green Book,” which was co-written by Vallelonga’s son Nick, turns out to be much more than “The Odd Couple” meets “Driving Miss Daisy.” Surely Nick’s own intimate knowledge of the real-life lead players helps lend “Green Book” its sense of groundedness, not to mention the distinctive characters of two larger-than-life men. What’s more, it makes sure to give the audience permission to laugh, even as the stakes of Shirley’s trip become dangerously high.

As might be expected, Tony and Dr. Shirley meet their fair share of physical danger in “Green Book,” but it’s the psychic blows that wound the most: Although at first the uncouth Tony may not understand Dr. Shirley’s genius at the piano — as well as his sophisticated sense of etiquette and comportment — even he can recognize the hypocrisy of applauding someone’s talent one minute, then relegating him to an outdoor lavatory the next. But it’s not as if Dr. Shirley is any more at home among the mostly black servers, bartenders and domestic staff that he encounters in a world where a man like him — black, brilliantly educated and, one scene suggests, gay — can find little if any purchase.

It will surprise no one to learn that both Tony and Dr. Shirley undergo powerful transformations in “Green Book,” which begins with a scene of Tony throwing out two water glasses used by black workmen hired by his wife, Dolores (Linda Cardellini), and which also includes a scene of Tony encouraging his ever-so-proper employer to eat a piece of fried chicken with his hands. If that image sounds horribly cringeworthy, it’s a tribute to director Peter Farrelly and to Mortensen and Ali that what could be a fatally misbegotten exercise winds up being unexpectedly warm and amusing.

Farrelly, best known for directing such comedies as “Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary” with his brother Bobby, has never been known as subtle, or for caring much about what his movies looked like. But “Green Book” is an exceptionally pleasant experience, both visually and aurally, photographed in rich period hues by Sean Porter and drenched in gorgeous music by both Shirley and composer Kris Bowers. It was Bowers, reportedly, who coached Ali in the finger movements that look so convincing in the film, especially during a fabulously boisterous interlude set at a hopping juke joint.

But all the technical prowess in the world wouldn’t be able to overcome iffy casting in a film that lives or dies by its two central performances. In that regard, Mortensen and Ali take ownership of “Green Book” early on and make it entirely theirs. Mortensen has always been an appealing, versatile actor, but here he discovers untold layers of humor (and belly fat) to lean in to Tony’s alternately grating and hilarious naivete. Playing off Mortensen’s expansive lack of self-consciousness, Ali is all controlled interior, communicating as much in a glance or a raised finger as with a pages-long monologue.

The cumulative result of so many things going for it is that “Green Book” fires on all cylinders, creating the kind of satisfying mainstream moviegoing experience that many observers thought Hollywood had forgotten how to make. There was a time when “Green Book” might have been the tale of a racist-with-a-heart-of-gold being redeemed by a too-good-to-be-true African American shaman or self-sacrificing paragon. No one is redeemed here, just given space to develop mutual respect and affection. The great success of “Green Book” lies in its modesty, and the straightforward way it recognizes seismic change in the incremental turning of a human heart.

PG-13.  At Regal’s Gallery Place Stadium 14 and AMC’s Tysons Corner 16. Contains mature thematic elements, strong language, including racial epithets, smoking, some violence and suggestive material. 130 minutes.

Film Review: ‘Green Book’

Viggo Mortensen gains 30 pounds to play a racist chauffeur who comes around in this feel-good flip on the 'Driving Miss Daisy' formula.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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OK, class, who can explain what a Green Book is? For those who don’t know, it was a handbook for black motorists seeking “vacation without aggravation,” an indispensable travel guide listing friendly places to stay and tips for avoiding trouble in the Jim Crow South. As such, “Green Book” makes a clever title for a road movie unlike any other: the true story of the unlikely friendship between a black concert pianist and the New York City bouncer hired to chauffeur him through unfriendly territory.

Although inspirational on its surface, the film presents a pretty bleak picture of intolerance in 1962 America, when segregation and other openly racist policies would have made such a trip a dangerous prospect for a wealthy, well-educated black man, with or without a bruiser like Frank Anthony Vallelonga to watch his back. Featuring a pair of terrific performances by Viggo Mortensen as a goombah with a heart of gold and Mahershala Ali as multilingual composer-musician Don Shirley, the story may be unique, yet it goes pretty much exactly the way you might expect, with one huge twist: The credits read “Directed by Peter Farrelly ” — which means this feel-good tour through American bigotry was made by one-half of the sibling duo responsible for “Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary.”

Turns out, that’s not such a bad thing, considering that the Farrelly brothers (whose gross-out sensibility ushered in the current era of R-rated comedies) showed that they were really a couple of sentimental softies somewhere around the time of “Shallow Hal.” Besides, if ever there was a project to challenge audiences’ assumptions about what certain people are capable of, this is it.

A play-it-safe crowd-pleaser in the family-friendly vein of “Hidden Figures” and “The Help” — movies that condemn racism as if the problem were already solved rather than still alive and well — “Green Book” may as well be “Driving Miss Daisy” in reverse, focusing on the inevitable fireworks when an elegant black man hires an ill-mannered guy from the Bronx to drive him around the South. It works on account of the chemistry between the two leads, both of whom are showing audiences a different side of themselves.

Enjoying his first starring role post-“Moonlight,” Ali may as well be playing the opposite of the empathetic drug dealer whose too-brief screen time in the first segment of Barry Jenkins’ film lifted the entire experience: Dr. Don Shirley is a regal black man whose cultured upbringing makes him an uptight Henry Higgins type to Mortensen’s Tony (who calls him “Doc” for short). Meanwhile, packing on 30 pounds to play a good old boy from the Bronx, Viggo gets a laugh every time he opens his mouth — always for one of two purposes: either to hustle whoever’s listening into giving him what he wants (hence his nickname, “Tony Lip”) or else to stuff food inside it (he seems to spend half the movie eating, whether it’s engaging in hot dog-eating contests at the local diner or alone in his hotel room, folding a pizza in half for a late-night snack).

We seldom get to see Mortensen in comic roles, but his goofy, sideways smile seems perfectly suited to this one, making it hard — even when he’s saying things that are nowhere near politically correct — to dislike the guy for long. Then again, it’s the responsibility of movies like this to remind audiences that attitudes were not always so enlightened when it comes to race relations in this country, and “Green Book” does a fine job of depicting the rampant disrespect that people of color were shown not only in the Deep South but also in New York City, where Shirley keeps an elaborately decorated apartment above Carnegie Hall (end-credits photos suggest the production designers actually downplayed his eclectic decorating style).

Costume designer Betsy Heimann outfits Ali in period-specific clothes that make it perfectly clear, from the moment he first appears on-screen, that Shirley is proud of his heritage and, for the remainder of the film, that he belongs to a much better class than Tony, who’s seen splattering a client’s blood across the front of his red Copacabana blazer in the opening scene. When the club closes for renovations, working-class Tony needs to find another gig fast, so long as it’s honest (if he’s not careful, the Sopranos-like local crime families will have him doing shady side jobs), which is how he finds himself interviewing for the role of Dr. Shirley’s driver on an eight-week concert tour — which will mean leaving wife Linda Cardellini home with the kids, while Shirley’s two fellow musicians, bassist Mike Hatton and Russian cellist Dimiter D. Marinov, take their own car.

One of the running themes in “Green Book” — and perhaps the quality two guys from such different cultural backgrounds saw and respected in each other — is these men each observe unwritten codes of honesty and honor, and though they don’t always align, they come from a place of personal integrity. Of course, it’s a nice reversal that, as this uncouth white guy’s boss, Shirley has the power to insist that Tony adhere to his values, which means forcing him to return a “lucky rock” stolen from a roadside stand. Later, as their dynamic starts to loosen, they trade requests: Tony talks Shirley into trying some genuine Kentucky Fried Chicken, but Shirley gets the last laugh, insisting that Tony go back after tossing his empty soda cup out the window.

The movie would be plenty amusing if it were focused entirely on these two characters getting to know each another, opening one another’s eyes in the process. But given their route, it’s the audience’s eyes that are opened as “Green Book” shows just how inhuman Americans could be to their neighbors in 1962: At first, it’s just the indignity of not being allowed to eat, sleep, or relieve oneself in the same establishments, until one night in Kansas, when Shirley ventures into a bar alone and receives a beating for the simple fact of being black. Tony shows up just in time to rescue Shirley from the rednecks’ clutches, but it’s a clue to the abuse that lies ahead — not only from belligerent hicks but also from the police (they’re pulled over more than once) and, most insultingly, from the high-society whites who’ve engaged Shirley’s services.

Oh, but to hear Shirley play! Mortensen’s role may be the showier of the two, but Ali is a marvel to watch in his musical performances. The actor suggests Eddie Murphy in “Coming to America” crossed with the composure Adrien Brody brought to “The Pianist,” where performing serves as a way to communicate across cultural differences, and also to redirect the frustration of all the ways he has been mistreated. Constantly rewarding us with music, the soundtrack mixes the trio’s concert pieces with “black music” that Shirley doesn’t recognize — like Little Richard and Chubby Checker — culminating in an impromptu Christmas concert and the group-hug ending audiences want. “Green Book” can’t heal racism, but it’s a reminder that spending time with people different from ourselves, even if only in the dark on a movie screen, can be the key to combating prejudice.

Related: “Green Book” Is a Story Perfect for Today

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Gala Presentations), Sept. 11, 2018. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 130 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Participant Media, DreamWorks Pictures presentation of a Charles B. Wessler, Innisfree Pictures production, in association with Cinetic Media. Producers: Jim Burke, Charles B. Wessler, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga. Executive producers: Jeff Skoll, Jonathan King, Octavia Spencer, Kwame L. Parker, John Sloss, Steven Farneth. Co-producer: James B. Rogers.
• Crew: Director: Peter Farrelly. Screenplay: Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly. Camera (color, widescreen): Sean Porter. Editor: Patrick J. Don Vito. Music: Kris Bowers.
• With: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali , Linda Cardellini, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dimiter D. Marinov, P.J. Byrne.

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2018, Comedy/Drama, 2h 10m

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Critics Consensus

Green Book takes audiences on an excessively smooth ride through bumpy subject matter, although Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen's performances add necessary depth. Read critic reviews

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Dr. Don Shirley is a world-class African-American pianist who's about to embark on a concert tour in the Deep South in 1962. In need of a driver and protection, Shirley recruits Tony Lip, a tough-talking bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx. Despite their differences, the two men soon develop an unexpected bond while confronting racism and danger in an era of segregation.

Rating: PG-13 (Racial Epithets|Language|Thematic Content|Smoking|Some Violence|Suggestive Material)

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Peter Farrelly

Producer: Jim Burke , Charles B. Wessler , Peter Farrelly , Brian Hayes Currie , Nick Vallelonga

Writer: Nick Vallelonga , Brian Hayes Currie , Peter Farrelly

Release Date (Theaters): Nov 21, 2018  wide

Release Date (Streaming): Feb 19, 2019

Box Office (Gross USA): $85.1M

Runtime: 2h 10m

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Production Co: Charles B. Wessler Entertainment, Innisfree Pictures

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Cast & Crew

Viggo Mortensen

Mahershala Ali

Dr. Donald Shirley

Linda Cardellini

Sebastian Maniscalco

Johnny Venere

Dimiter D. Marinov

Mike Hatton

Record Exec

Joe Cortese

Gio Loscudo

Maggie Nixon

Copa Coat Check Girl

Bobby Rydell

Jon Sortland

Rydell Band Leader

Jules Podell

Anthony Mangano

Copa Bouncer Danny

Copa Maître d' Carmine

Quinn Duffy

Mikey Cerrone

Seth Hurwitz

Johnny Randazzo

Hudson Galloway

Nick Vallelonga

Gavin Lyle Foley

Frankie Vallelonga

Peter Farrelly

Screenwriter

Brian Hayes Currie

Executive Producer

Jonathan King

Octavia Spencer

Kwame Parker

Steven Farneth

Charles B. Wessler

Sean Porter

Cinematographer

Patrick J. Don Vito

Film Editing

Kris Bowers

Original Music

Production Design

Scott Plauche

Art Director

News & Interviews for Green Book

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Critic Reviews for Green Book

Audience reviews for green book.

This film proves why movies can be so powerful with a touching, poignant and some times funny story of opposites attract. Enjoyed every moment although it isn't always easy to watch. Mortenson and Ali shine and there are strong supporting roles as well. A great way to start off the new year. 01/01/2020

While it may feel to lighthearted or safe for play there's no denying the impact Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali's chemistry and comradery guides this film. Green Book is beautifully directed and exceptional in their performances that's meaningful and heartwarming 4.1/5

Interesting film and character study. Did the film deserve best picture at the Oscars? Probably not, but we all know the Oscars don't get the best picture correct. The film contains great acting and filmmaking, don't let my thought of best picture deter you from what is still a great film. It is still very relevant and topical for our generation as racism still exists, even if it is more behind closed doors. Mortensen maintains the character actor model from his early days and rewards the viewer with a character who grows over the course of the film. Ali is amazing as always and deserves bigger roles, he continues to shine as the support, even though he has a central presence like Washington. 24/05/2019

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‘Green Book’ Review: Odd-Couple Dramedy Is Timely Feel-Good Movie

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Dr. Don Shirley ( Mahershala Ali ), an African-American classical-trained pianist on a jazz-trio tour in a part of 1960’s America that’s not prepared to embrace integration. In his search for a chauffeur, Don makes the curious choice of Frank Anthony Vallelonga, a.k.a. Tony Lip ( Viggo Mortensen ), a loudmouth Italian cliché temporarily off the Mob payroll as a bouncer back in New Yawk. They sure as hell don’t get off to an amicable start, with Don sitting like a king in a chic apartment above Carnegie Hall. Tony tells his client that he’s open-minded, claiming that “my wife and I had a couple coloreds over for drinks.” (In an earlier scene, two black men working in Tony’s home drink from glasses that he later trashes.)

What follows is a reverse twist on Driving Miss Daisy, as the duo set off on an eight-week concert tour filled with dangerous obstacles. Driver and passenger have two things on their side: Tony’s muscle and The Negro Motorist Green-Book, a travel guide published from 1936 to 1966 to assist black travelers about where to stay and what to avoid in the Jim Crow South. Welcome to Green Book, the winner of the Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award this year that’s “inspired” (that word!) by their real-life friendship.

Famed for the gross-out comedies he made with his brother Bobby — dump all you want on Dumb & Dumber, but Kingpin is immortal — Peter Farrelly’s impressive solo directorial debut the movie’s shifting tones; co-written by Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie and Tony’s son, Nick Vallelonga, the script is filled with a piercing gravity that deepens the funny business. There are easy laughs when Tony teaches Don about the wonders of fried chicken while the musician helps his driver write letters home to his wife, Dolores (Linda Cardellini). And there are also bruising glimpses into a time when 
racial profiling had the law on its side. Green Book is a movie about class as well as race, and Farrelly rightly refuses to paint a pretty picture.

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Ali, a Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for Moonlight, is superb at finding the buried rage in a refined artist challenging fellow Americans who never accepted the abolition of slavery. He makes us see that Don is on his own when it comes to finding a place to belong. And the actor, who had help from a pianist double in the club scenes, is simply stupendous at showing Don alive in his art. Tony senses his genius, but is horrified that Don doesn’t know Chubby Checker or Little Richard. “I’m blacker than you are,” the working-class driver snaps.

Mortensen is terrific, having beefed up by 30 pounds to play this bruiser with a Bronx honk and the dazed realization that his fists can’t change a damn thing. Sure, Tony roughs up white hypocrites who applaud the musician onstage and then bar him from their restaurants. But don’t mistake him for another white savior. The role is a game-changer for an actor, whose dramatic chops are a given (see his Academy nods for Eastern Promises and Captain Fantastic ) but proves he’s got a real flair for comedy that feels revelatory. He and Ali could take their own double act on the road.

Green Book ends in a gush of Christmas-themed feel-good that will probably drive some folks nuts. But look closer and you’ll see that 
Farrelly never forgets the shadows lurking outside the fierce but fragile connection that Don and Tony have forged over two mercurial months on the road. Simplistic? Maybe. But in a time when our nation is more divided than ever, the movie offers the possibility of redemption. Thanks to the dream team of Mortensen and Ali, audiences will be cheering. And they’ll be right.

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Book Reviews

J.p. morgan's personal librarian was a black woman. this is her story..

Karen Grigsby Bates

I have a confession: I am not a fan of the passing trope. From Nella Larsen's 1929 classic, Passing , to the original Imitation of Life (the 1934 movie starred the incomparable Fredi Washington as Peola, the little girl who wanted to be white) to Britt Bennett's 2020 novel The Vanishing Half , the notion of a Black person posing as white to escape her Blackness just felt ... tired.

"Deep down, all Black people want to be white." I heard that in a social psychology class, repeated as if it were a truism. It's not. At several points in childhood and as an adult, I've loved the notion of being rich, but being white? I cannot imagine it. I wouldn't be me.

And that, basically, is at the crux of The Personal Librarian , a new novel by Heather Terrell (writing as Marie Benedict) and Victoria Christopher Murray. Their heroine, Belle Da Costa Greene, was one of the most prominent career women of her time. As the personal librarian to financier J.P.Morgan, she pursued and curated a collection of rare books, manuscripts and art that became world-renowned.

Passing as white causes a family split

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What the world didn't know was that Belle Da Costa Greene was Black. Or, in the parlance of the day, colored. Greene was born into a prominent family of pale Black Washingtonians in 1883. Her parents were intellectuals. Her father, Richard T. Greener, was the first Black graduate of Harvard. He was also an ardent race man, and spent his life pressing for racial equality. Greene's mother, Genevieve Fleet, determined that racial equality wasn't going to happen in her lifetime, and after the family's move to New York, she declared them white in the 1905 NY State Census. That subterfuge became the cause of a huge rift — her parents separated, and Belle's family subsequently lived as white.

Belle Marion Greener became Belle Da Costa Greene — the Da Costa name an allusion to a fabricated Portuguese grandmother, a convenient explanation for Belle's olive complexion. (Contemporary portraits show an attractive woman who many Black people would immediately recognize as kindred; apparently Gilded Age white folks were easier to fool.)

Belle meets J.P.

The family's entire fortunes — where they lived, their occupations, everything — were completely dependent on Belle's white identity, as her mother constantly reminded her. When she became friends with financier J. Pierpont Morgan's nephew when they both worked in the rare books library at Princeton, young Morgan suggested to his uncle that he consider Belle as his personal librarian. In an interview, something about the young woman's intelligence and humor appealed to Morgan: She was hired on the spot.

As the two began to work closely together, Morgan came to trust Belle's vision and expertise. He knew that under her astute eye his collection would be more than an assortment of rarities only one of the world's richest men could acquire. Belle could provide an important missing link: context. And indeed, the Morgan Library became known as a private collection of rare books, manuscripts and art that competed with esteemed public institutions such as the British Museum. As the literal face of the library, Belle became a power in her own right, courted by art dealers, embraced by the socially powerful, profiled as an elegant careerist at a time when working women were rare.

Paying a price for a new life

But as Benedict and Murray show, there was a terrible cost to maintaining that façade. Belle was cut off from her beloved extended family in DC: "Once Mama made the decision that we would live as white," she says. "We could not take the risk." And while she had many lovers (including famed art historian Bernard Berenson), she could marry none:

I've always known that, because of my heritage, a traditional relationship would not be possible for me ... because a marriage means children, and that is something I cannot hazard. Without the fairer skin of my siblings, I could never risk bearing a child whose skin color might reveal my deception.

Benedict, who is white, and Murray, who is African American, do a good job of depicting the tightrope Belle walked, and her internal conflict from both sides — wanting to adhere to her mother's wishes and move through the world as white even as she longed to show her father she was proud of her race. Like Belle and her employer, Benedict and Murray had almost instant chemistry, and as a result, the book's narrative is seamless. And despite my aversion to the passing trope, I became hooked.

Belle Da Costa Greene is not front and center of the Morgan Library's story now. But she will be much more visible when The Morgan celebrates its centennial as a public institution in 2024. Which is fitting, as it was she who persuaded Jack Morgan to donate his father's astonishing library to the city. It's a gift that honors J.P. Morgan, his descendants — and the personal librarian who was critical to the Morgan's success.

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Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali make odd-couple story shine in Green Book': EW review

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

Viggo Mortensen has played nearly everything onscreen — Amish barn raiser, Russian mob fixer, backwoods radical, Tolkien warrior king — but he’s never been a mook. It’s almost impossible to picture the fine-boned Danish-American actor as Tony “Lip” Vallelonga until you see him up there, all marinara-sauced vowels and Brylcreemed hair, working his bada bing like Joe Pesci’s chin-dimpled brother.

As a Bronx security man who agrees to drive a black musician (Mahershala Ali) through the Deep South circa 1962, he has by far the showiest role in Peter Farrelly’s winning dramedy, and it might finally earn him the Oscar he’s long deserved. The movie wouldn’t work, though, without the elegant, understated balance of his counterpart.

Ali’s Dr. Don Shirley is a brilliant piano maestro, celebrated in the world’s finest private homes and concert halls — he’s performed twice for the sitting president and lives in a lavish apartment above Carnegie Hall — but he hasn’t ever taken his show below the Mason-Dixon. He also doesn’t quite know what to do with a man like Tony, with his bearish habits and blunt-force personality.

Green Book is inspired by a true story, and the script — written by Farrelly, Brian Currie, and Vallelonga’s real-life son Nick — hits many of the beats you’d expect. The bigotry the pair encounters ranges from politely insidious to outright savage; the odd-couple bonding happens inevitably, in picturesque fits and starts.

But it’s hard to overstate how charming it all is, and how much both actors make the material shine. (Linda Cardellini is great, too, in a small but pivotal role as Tony’s wife.) In a world that seems to get uglier every day, this movie’s gentle heart and mere humanity feel like a salve. B+

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“Green Book,” Reviewed: Peter Farrelly’s Bland, Regressive Flip on “Driving Miss Daisy”

By Richard Brody

The new movie “Green Book” sets up, with a pristine precision, a scenario that was already ridiculous when it was presented in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” more than half a century ago: the acceptance by white people of a black protagonist whose talents and achievements are exceptional, whose manners are elegant, whose record is spotless, and whose résumé and connections are stamped “high-class.” “Green Book,” a blatantly Oscar-baiting flip on “Driving Miss Daisy,” is set in 1962 and is based on the true story of the business and personal relationship between the black musician Donald Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali) and the white night-club bouncer Tony Vallelonga, a.k.a. Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), so nicknamed because of his inclination to run his mouth. (He boasts of being “the best bullshit artist in the Bronx.”) Don hires Tony to drive him on a concert tour, mainly through the South. Tony, a crude man with street smarts, hard fists, and courage, is bewildered and awed by Don, who, for his part, both disdains Tony’s raw character and depends on him for protection in a part of the country where he won’t be able to defend himself.

The movie, directed by Peter Farrelly, with a script that he co-wrote with Nick Vallelonga (Tony’s son) and Brian Hayes Currie, stays close to Tony throughout, and only occasionally and briefly leaves him for a glimpse of Don’s experience—and then does so mainly to set up trouble from which Tony has to rescue him. In effect, “Green Book” is the story of Tony’s awakening, or, rather, his awokening: his appalled reaction to the firsthand observation of the racist laws and practices to which Don is subjected, of the violence that Don constantly fears. Don quickly wins Tony’s respect and admiration; Tony, both shocked by the racism of Jim Crow and by the humiliations and indignities inflicted upon Don, overcomes his own hitherto unquestioned prejudices and embraces Don as a friend. (The title refers to an actual publication, a guide book listing hotels, restaurants, and other public accommodations throughout the country that were safe for black travellers; Don’s manager provides Tony with a copy at the start of the journey.)

In his life before Don, depicted in the movie’s long prelude, Tony is revealed to be a casual racist in the casually racist milieu of his working-class, Italian-American Bronx neighborhood: when two plumbers, black men, are working in the kitchen of his apartment while Tony (who gets home from work around dawn) is asleep, his wife’s Italian kinfolk come over to keep watch. After his wife, Dolores (Linda Cardellini), gives the workmen a glass of water, Tony, awakened by the crowd (the men are watching the World Series on TV), surreptitiously takes their used glasses from the sink and deposits them in the garbage can. (Dolores eventually notices and puts the glasses back into the sink.)

When Don hires Tony, the movie teasingly plays with a reversal of socioeconomic stereotypes—a black person’s upper-class refinement, a white person’s underclass struggle. Don, though he’s widely admired and successful—he has even had the honor of performing in the White House—is a frustrated classical musician, trained as a concert pianist but barred from that career because of his race. Instead, he has become a musician whom Tony describes as “Like Liberace, but better,” blending classical stylings and improvisations on popular tunes. In the car, while Tony has the radio tuned to a Top Forty station, Don displays his ignorance of black popular music. He has, he says, never heard Chubby Checker; he doesn’t recognize the music of Little Richard. Aretha Franklin? Sam Cooke? “These are your people!” Tony exclaims in an the oblivious riff, ultimately adding, “I’m blacker than you are!” (Tony says more or less everything with an exclamation mark.) The earnest, repellent notion is raised again by Tony when he gets Don to try, for the first time, fried chicken. (Don is loath to eat with his fingers, saying, “It seems so unsanitary.”)

Meanwhile, throughout their journey, Don tries to teach Tony manners. After the chicken feast, Don orders Tony to stop the car and to pick up the soda cup that he (Tony) threw out the window. The musician urges Tony not to use “profanity,” corrects his diction, and, when Tony writes letters home to Dolores, plays Cyrano and feeds him poetic phrases with which to pay her homage. The movie borrows its tropes, and its comedy, from “The Odd Couple,” but its mismatch sometimes turns earnest, as when Don reproaches Tony for staying outside a mansion and playing craps with other—black—drivers. (“They didn’t have a choice whether to be inside or out; you did.”)

Don fits another stereotype, as well, one that works all too conveniently within the movie’s narrow contours: he’s gay. This fact renders him essentially neutered in the presence of Tony and his family and friends, as if removing from the story any racist questions of menacing black male sexuality of the sort that are planted early in the tale and then never explored or challenged. In the course of the journey, he narrowly avoids criminal charges for sexual relations with another man. This is a subject on which Tony, a self-described night-life sophisticate, has no prejudices; here, too, he’s merely trying to protect Don. “If this got out, it would kill your career,” Tony reminds him.

In one scene, Tony himself is the victim of an ethnic insult, and he starts a fight, at great risk to both of them. “I’m the one who pays the price,” Don says, advocating “not violence” but “dignity—dignity always prevails.” Never mind that Don’s life, throughout the film, is repeatedly saved by Tony’s aptitude for violence. (I won’t spoil the ugly implications of the one moment when Tony actually fires a gun.)

Don’s story is that of a lonely outsider who laments about being considered “not black enough, not white enough, not man enough,” and adds, with bewildered anguish, “What am I?” That horrific “what”—instead of “who”—is, in effect, the crux of the film. Though Don’s lament pushes back against prejudices regarding cultural identity, the movie also suggests that the answer to his rhetorical question is “a person,” a trait-free person, and that this is quite enough. The essential subject of “Green Book” isn’t the honoring of cultures, identities, and differences but their effacement in the interest of an ostensibly color-blind neutrality, a bland common ground of an accepted mainstream (in pop and high culture alike) of cuisine, entertainment, friends, family, and personal gratification. (The only instance of civil-rights politics in the film, for instance, is Don’s reference to John and Robert Kennedy, who are “trying to change this country.”)

This grotesquely ahistorical and impersonal view honors a mode of racial enlightenment—a “both sides” enlightenment—that’s as regressive as it is universally salable. It hedges its view of race with as many caveats as a movie producer’s contract. As directed by Peter Farrelly (one of the two Farrelly brothers, known for their comedic films), “Green Book” remains buoyant throughout, with appealingly whimsical humor—with Tony’s bluff ribaldry and Don’s dry wit. It’s that very humor that keeps the movie floating, weightlessly, above the appalling bedrock of its ponderous assumptions.

“Green Book” offers a vision of racists changing their views, but in a way that doesn’t in any way threaten racist prejudices. It’s a calculatedly heartwarming and good-humored look at atrocious actions, ideas, and attitudes with a pallid glow of halcyon optimism, a view of a change of heart that’s achieved through colossal exertions and confrontations with danger. The film’s built-in air of hopefulness, of laws changed and practices overcome, invites a response that blows down this cinematic house of cards: bullshit.

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By Isaac Chotiner

By Naomi Fry

‘Green Book’ Review: A Moving, Charming Buddy Movie About Race | TIFF 2018

Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali give great performances in Peter Farrelly's racially-charged new film.

If there was a pleasant surprise at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, it was Peter Farrelly 's interracial buddy movie Green Book , which came out of nowhere to win the festival's audience award and cement a place for itself in this year's Oscar race.

Viggo Mortensen stars as Tony Villelonga, aka Tony Lip, who works security at the Copacabana in New York City. When the club shuts down for a few months, he's forced to find a new job in order to make ends meet, and he's offered a gig as a driver. Of course, this is no ordinary job. His boss is Dr. Paul Shirley ( Mahershala Ali ), a renowned African-American pianist who has decided, with little regard for his own safety, to tour the Deep South, where racism still runs rampant. That's why he needs a driver who can handle himself on the road, and provide a little muscle in case the circumstances call for it. And so begins their road trip, with Tony's wife ( Linda Cardellini ) making sandwiches for the long ride.

Along the way, Dr. Shirley challenges Tony to be better, whether it’s his language or littering on the highway or stealing a jade rock that he "found" on the ground. Of course, Dr. Shirley's journey is not without its own set of challenges. For example, he performs for the white elite, but they won’t let him eat dinner alongside them, and still treat him like the help rather than the revered artist he is. Sometimes Tony is there to get him out of those racially-charged jams, but there are some sticky situations that he can't get Dr. Shirley out of, and in fact, only escalates with his lunkheaded machismo. The fact that Dr. Shirley maintains his dignity in the face of all this hatred is a testament to his character, and Ali does justice to the role by maintaining his composure, even when fire burns within his eyes. Perhaps that fire exists because he’s hiding a secret, one that Tony is careful not to judge him for. Mortensen does a wonderful job of showing Tony's big heart in this surprising sequence, which is quite effective.

In the middle of all of this, Dr. Shirley helps Tony pen love letters to his wife. If there's a weak element to this film, it's probably this one, as Tony's marriage isn't particularly all that interesting. But it's important that one of the two leads has a family, if only to contrast the fact that the other doesn't. Indeed, Dr. Shirley has no family or significant romantic interest, as he is instead surrounded by artifacts from his worldly adventures. That's why his friendship with Tony -- inspired by a true one, as the trailer so helpfully notes -- is so meaningful. Even though Tony can't always find the right words to communicate his feelings, he and Dr. Shirley come to an understanding as men. It may sound Lifetime-y, but it's actually very touching, brought to life by the grace of two wildly talented performers in sync with each other. Seriously, this film is like a duet, with laughs and tears in equal measure.

The title refers to The Negro Motorist Green Book , which African-American visitors to the South used as a guide to identify which hotels and restaurants would welcome them without hassle. It doesn't have much bearing on the film -- there aren't a bunch of scenes where Tony consults the book or anything -- but it's actually an interesting way to sell this film, symbolically, at least.

Those who dismiss Green Book as little more than “a reverse Driving Miss Daisy ” would be wrong to do so. This is a truly moving, wonderfully charming crowdpleaser that strikes me as perfect film to see with your family over Thanksgiving, when it is scheduled for release. Believe the hype, this is the real deal, and a major accomplishment for director Peter Farrelly. Let this be a lesson not to put filmmakers, or artists of any kind, really, into a box. For in the end, Green Book says it takes more than genius, it takes courage to change people’s hearts. Well it also took some courage for Farrelly to challenge himself with this kind of material, which can be especially tricky in the hands of a white filmmaker, but the audience ate it up, and bolstered by two excellent performances, it may very well prove to be the sleeper hit of awards season.

For more of our reviews from the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, click on the links below:

• American Dharma
• Assassination Nation
• Beautiful Boy
• Can You Ever Forgive Me?
• The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
• The Front Runner
• The Hate U Give
• Hotel Mumbai
• If Beale Street Could Talk
• The Kindergarten Teacher
• Old Man & the Gun
• Outlaw King
• The Predator
• The Sisters Brothers
• The Standoff at Sparrow Creek
• A Star Is Born
• What They Had
• White Boy Rick

Green Book review: "A deftly disarming film about friendship and unity in divisive times"

GamesRadar+ Verdict

When the sentiment threatens to turn gloopy, Ali and Mortensen’s terrific leads steer Farrelly back on-track

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Behind the jokes about lacerated genitalia and mutts on drugs, the sentimental streak in the Farrelly brothers’ comedies always ran wider than Jim Carrey’s gurning kisser. With that in mind, Peter Farrelly’s race-themed buddy movie looks like a more organic gear-change than might otherwise have been expected. 

Despite the absence of chemically enhanced pets, his transition from fart-powered anarchy to heart-powered uplift proves a satisfyingly smooth one, if you didn’t mind the sentimentality in the first place. For Farrelly the elder, it’s also a canny shift. The family brand of gross-out humour peaked with There’s Something About Mary (1998), before enjoying a fondly extended stay of life up to and including Stuck on You (2003). But the precipitous decline begun by The Heartbreak Kid (2007) gathered pace until Dumb and Dumber to (2014), where the brothers’ bid to recapture former glories seemed so forced that they couldn’t even score laughs with a cat named Butthole getting crazy on meth. 

Farrelly’s response is to tap that reliable resource of respectable makeovers, the “inspired by a true story” tale. Flipping the ratio of character to comedy so that the gags take second position to the people involved, Farrelly focuses on the Jim Crow-era bond between no-filter Italian-American bouncer Tony ‘Lip’ Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) and urbane Jamaican-American pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali). With the film’s title nodding to a travel guide for black people (“Vacation without aggravation”), the lead duo’s relationship begins when Tony takes a job as driver for the Doc’s 1962 concert tour of the Deep South – a trip fraught with potential for trouble. 

If the set-up evokes Driving Miss Daisy upended, both the cast and Farrelly’s previous form with road-driven odd couples deepen and sharpen the ride. As Tony takes the wheel of a shiny Cadillac and Shirley sits upright in the back, Farrelly (co-writing with Brian Currie and Nick Vallelonga, Tony’s son) exploits the sizeable cultural gap between them for laughs and drama. They bicker initially, largely because Tony never stops smoking, eating, and talking. Then they begin to bond, aided by Tony’s gift of the gab and Shirley’s way with the written word. See, Tony can talk his way outta trouble but he don’t read so well, so the Doc helps him write letters to Mrs. Lip, the stoical Dolores (Linda Cardellini, underused here). 

If Farrelly’s main reference points for his mismatched buddy set-up are ’80s hits Rain Man and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Green Book likewise benefits hugely from its note-perfect lead pairing. After a career ranging from the ruggedly poetic Aragorn to his violent, soulful, orally fixated leads for David Cronenberg (see A Dangerous Method ’s Sigmund Freud), Mortensen shows us something fresh here, not least the extra weight on his gut. When Tony bins two glasses in his house after black workers have used them, he seems merely to be an irredeemable creature of little sensitivity and vast appetites – no passing pizza is safe in his vicinity. 

But, as Dr. Shirley’s recurrent encounters with racism open Tony’s eyes wider than his ever-hungry gob, Mortensen and Farrelly find ways to soften him persuasively. Meanwhile, Ali plays the straight man to Mortensen’s wild card with controlled assurance. Slowly unpeeling hints of the Doc’s anger and isolation, he upholds his dignity as a contrasting mirror to racist America’s lack of such. Sadly, Farrelly brushes over his sexuality, but the chemistry between the leads sings with such ease that you rarely notice as Tony and Don change before your eyes. 

But it’s on the occasions when you do notice that Farrelly makes his biggest stumbles. When Tony tells the Doc about Little Richard and fried chicken, you gag on the implication: is Tony presuming to lecture Don about black culture? Later, a roadside surprise offers a cockle-warming twist too far, reflected in a soundtrack that often labours to pluck our emotional responses like violins. 

The ameliorating factors are Farrelly’s easy way with character and broad sense of humanism. Awards-bait or not, Green Book plays as a deftly disarming film about friendship and unity in divisive times: calculated, perhaps, but calculated from a kind, sincere place. It opens with someone saying, “Thank you all for coming to see us.” It ends with another, more spoiler-y “thank you.” In between, as Farrelly’s scrupulously well-mannered appeal to people’s better natures gets into its impeccably cast groove, the heartwarming pleasure is all ours.

For more hotly anticipated films, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in store for 2019 - and while you're at it, why not take a look at the best movies of 2018 that you might have missed?

• Release date: Out now (US)/February 1, 2019 (UK)
• Certificate: PG-13 (US)/12A (UK)
• Running time: 130 mins

Kevin Harley is a freelance journalist with bylines at Total Film, Radio Times, The List, and others, specializing in film and music coverage. He can most commonly be found writing movie reviews and previews at GamesRadar+. 

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• Green Book builds a feel-good comedy atop an artifact of shameful segregation. Yikes.

The movie is named after guides published for black travelers in segregated America. But its spin is all Hollywood.

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Green Book took home three Golden Globe Awards on Sunday for Best Comedy, Best Screenplay, and supporting actor Mahershala Ali — and that’s hardly a surprise. A period piece that’s also a road trip movie and a buddy dramedy? Based on a true story? With two strong performances and a heartwarming message about overcoming prejudice? That ends at a Christmas celebration? Sign America up (or at least the Hollywood Foreign Press Association).

The film, directed by comedy veteran Peter Farrelly , stars Viggo Mortensen and Ali. It’s “inspired” by the true friendship of Tony Vallelonga, an Italian-American chauffeur/bodyguard from the Bronx, and Don Shirley, the black pianist Vallelonga is hired to drive and protect on a concert tour through the deep South in 1962. It’s often funny, with some poignant moments and a heart that feels like it’s in the right place.

Yet curiously, the Green Book itself doesn’t play much of a role in the film. Mortensen’s character, Tony, takes it on the trip and leafs through it several times. Early on, he briefly explains its purpose to his wife Delores (Linda Cardellini): to provide black travelers with information about “safe” places to stay and to eat while they travel. He’ll need to refer to it to do his job, getting Shirley from gig to gig safely throughout the musician’s eight-week tour.

But after that, the book is not mentioned by name, even as the pair encounter the full gamut of racism during the trip — ranging from casual remarks to “genteel” discrimination to violent hostility from civilians, bar patrons, and police. Indeed, we typically see it only when Tony quietly picks it up to find motels in which Shirley can safely stay.

When Farrelly took the stage to accept the Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical, he used the opportunity to reiterate the film’s themes (and demand that the orchestra not play him off):

Green Book is a story of a trip that — [ to the orchestra ] please, no, turn that off. No, go away. Off. Okay. This is a story of the trip that Don Shirley took in the pre-Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Don Shirley was a great man and underappreciated genius who couldn’t play the music he wanted to play, simply because of the color of his skin. Yet he went on to create his own music that still resonates to this day. ... This story, when I heard it, gave me hope, and I wanted to share this hope with you. Because we are still living in divided times, and that’s what this movie is for: It’s for everybody. If they can find common ground here, we all can. All we have to do is talk and to not judge people by their differences, but look for what we have in common. And we have a lot in common. We all want the same thing: We want love and happiness and want to be treated equally. And that’s not a bad thing.

Farrelly’s speech is of a piece with the film’s approach to racism, common to Hollywood films, which is to suggest that relationships between individuals will heal centuries of racism. And indeed, Green Book ’s treatment of racism is uneven at best. In an early scene, for instance, Tony throws away two drinking glasses that black construction workers used in his kitchen, suggesting he draws a hard line about even coming into contact with black people. But a movie like this needs a “likable” hero, and after that moment, he doesn’t engage in such blatantly offensive behavior for the rest of the film. As an Italian American, Tony would have experienced plenty of discrimination himself, but the film only hints at it.

But even setting aside the characters’ development, for a movie named Green Book , it’s light on details about the actual, well, Green Book. It also seems to imply that such a guide was only really necessary in the Deep South, which rang false to me. Watching it, I worried that the screenplay — written by Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie, and the real-life Tony’s son, Nick Vallelonga, who clearly drew on his father’s remembrance of the trip — might have glossed over the reality experienced by black Americans like Shirley.

But before seeing the movie, I didn’t know much about the Green Book itself, so I dug into its history to learn more. What I learned helped me see the ways in which Green Book doesn’t go nearly far enough in confronting its subject, and winds up trivializing serious matters as a result.

Here are four things I learned about the Green Book, and what it says about Green Book .

If you were a black American in the middle of the 20th century, you almost certainly knew about the Green Book

For middle-class Americans in the 1930s, the newfound availability of safe, affordable automobiles was not just a matter of convenience. It meant new possibilities, the ability to travel around the country at their leisure, without relying on anyone else. That was also true for African Americans, even in a country that was legally segregated in some places and functionally segregated virtually everywhere else.

But while white travelers could move with relative freedom, stopping into restaurants, bars, entertainment establishments, and places of lodging as they pleased, road travel was more fraught for African Americans. Staying in the wrong hotel, or trying to eat at the wrong establishment, could get you kicked out or much worse.

The Negro Motorist Green Book wasn’t the only travel book aimed at black motorists in America, but it was the most popular. It was created by Victor Hugo Green, an African-American mail carrier who lived in Harlem and worked in nearby Hackensack, New Jersey. Green worked on the project for three decades, from 1936 to 1966, shortly after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, with a break during World War II for about four years. The Green Book swiftly became the most vital document for black travelers in America, detailing places where they could eat, drink, and spend the night without being harassed or worse.

Twenty-two editions of the Green Book (and one supplement), published from 1937 to 1966, have since been collected and digitized by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. “From what I can tell, [Green] had a car, he was very interested in cars, and he decided to create a travel guide that helped black travelers, or black motorists, be able to take advantage of the newfound freedom of having a car,” Maira Liriano, the chief librarian and curator of the center’s Green Book collection, told me.

The Green Books were mostly devoted to options for lodging and dining, but they contained other information too. “There were listings for rest stops, restaurants, barber shops, beauty shops,” Liriano says. And in some towns, especially smaller ones, no hotel would offer lodging to black people. For many of those, the Green Book listed “tourist homes,” which Liriano describes as “sort of like a precursor to Airbnb.” Black homeowners, mostly in the South, would rent a room in their home to black travelers looking for somewhere to spend the night.

That was especially important in so-called “sundown towns,” which passed laws designed to drive black people out of town that prohibited them from being on the road at night. One such town is depicted in Green Book .

Sundown towns weren’t specifically mentioned in the Green Book. But there were about 10,000 sundown towns in the US as late as the 1960s, and not just in the South : Levittown, New York; Glendale, California; and most Illinois municipalities were among their number. And while it could be dangerous to be on the road at night, it could be equally dangerous to check into the wrong hotel. In an age where you couldn’t just whip out your phone and look up Yelp reviews — and in which you could literally risk your life by being in the wrong part of town with the wrong skin color — you needed a guide.

So if you were traveling while black, you knew about the Green Book, because you had to, for your own safety. In his 2000 memoir A Colored Man’s Journey through 20th Century Segregated America , Earl Hutchinson Sr. (believed to be the oldest black American to publish a memoir, at age 96), wrote that “the Green Book was the bible of every Negro highway traveler in the 1950s and the early 1960s. You literally didn’t dare leave home without it.”

In the film, Shirley never mentions or even looks at the Green Book — only Tony interacts with it. In fact, the Shirley character in the film seems to have consciously distanced himself from many elements of black culture, while remaining richly aware of the discrimination he will encounter on the trip. But in real life, Shirley had previously traveled throughout the country before embarking on his tour with Tony, and would almost certainly have known all about the Green Book. It simply wouldn’t have been safe not to.

The Green Book was necessary no matter which part of the country you were traveling through

Green Book depicts a range of ways in which the racist attitudes that were dominant in American life in the early and mid-20th century manifested themselves, from snide comments and racial epithets to outright hostility. But it strongly suggests that a guide like the Green Book was only really necessary in the Deep South, where under Jim Crow laws, segregation was not just encouraged, but legally enforced.

The first time Tony consults the Green Book comes after several stops on Shirley’s concert tour, in Ohio and Indiana. Once they cross into Kentucky, the Green Book becomes his guide, and we see it in his hands and on the car seat beside him several times. And a key scene near the end of Green Book suggests that while Shirley was harassed and worse by police in the South, once they returned north of the Mason-Dixon line, he was safe from that experience.

But the reality was different.

Victor Green himself lived in Harlem, a predominantly black neighborhood in New York City, and his first Green Book covered mostly the New York metropolitan area. “It was very much a local guide that listed auto repair shops, but also places in the suburbs, like nightclubs and restaurants,” Liriano told me. “It was highlighting businesses that were friendly and open, and that would be of interest, to the African American motorist.”

But interest in the book was high, and subsequent editions expanded very rapidly. “In two years, they included pretty much the whole country,” Liriano said.

That meant the Green Book didn’t restrict its listings to places like Georgia and Alabama, or other states with explicit Jim Crow laws — it was a lifeline for travelers virtually anywhere in the country.

In the 1962 edition of the Green Book , published the year in which Green Book is set, you can find listings for restaurants in Wilmington, Delaware; hotels in Billings, Montana; entertainment establishments in Seattle, Washington; and antique stores in New York City, all of which were friendly to black clientele. In many editions, listings spilled over US borders into Mexico and Canada, going as far north as Alaska. And in every city where establishments were listed as friendly to black travelers, there were almost certainly establishments that were unfriendly.

“In states that didn’t necessarily have laws on the books, there was definitely a custom to discriminate,” Liriano said. “The country was pretty much very racist, everywhere you went.”

Certainly, black travelers experienced different conditions in places where segregation was legal and where it wasn’t, and conditions varied across the north as well. In his 1998 memoir Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement , Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a Civil Rights pioneer, writes about a 17-hour road trip he took with his Uncle Otis in 1951, packing their lunches and carefully plotting which bathrooms were safe to use along the way from Alabama to upstate New York. “It wasn’t until we got to Ohio that I could feel Uncle Otis relax, and so I relaxed, too,” he writes, later recounting his amazement that his relatives in Buffalo had “white people living next door to them. On both sides.”

But there was no magical line that a black traveler could cross to find safety on the other side. “I think that’s the part that maybe people don’t think about as much,” Liriano told me. “You can blame the South for their laws; but the North was very much also a very segregated place with spaces that were white and spaces that were black, even though it wasn’t by law.”

What the Green Books omitted is as significant as what they contained

Green Book does well in illustrating how Shirley adapts his behavior to be more acceptable to the mostly white crowds who gather to hear him play, even though, as he knows, once he leaves the stage he’s back to being just another “Negro” in their eyes.

His strained, pained smile at the end of every stage set is the dead giveaway. It’s a stark reminder of the long American tradition of respectability politics . And the film is at its best when Tony and Shirley are discovering the limits of those politics, and learning how to challenge the white-defined status quo.

Some of the need to watch one’s step was reflected in the Green Books, which were intended for black readers but required broader support to remain in production. “Green had to collaborate with a lot of people, including the federal government’s travel bureau,” Liriano says. In interacting with the “Negro Affairs” office in that bureau, as well as other collaborators like gas and oil companies, Green often wound up working with other African-Americans.

But knowing that he needed the support of the government and various companies to keep producing this vital lifeline, Green tended to not rock the boat too much. “He’s not going to criticize or blatantly state things,” Liriano said. “You sort of have to read between the lines in a lot of what he writes in the Green Books.”

That meant not outright criticizing the very laws, customs, and racist attitudes that made 30 years of Green Books necessary. It also appears to have meant not identifying sundown towns.

Still, the sadness inherent in the very existence of the Green Books came through. The end of the introduction to the 1949 edition made this clear. After thanking the United States Travel Bureau’s “Negro Affairs” office for their support, and asking readers to send their feedback and mention the book to establishments that might want to be listed, Green concludes:

There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.

“But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year,” he writes.

It’s inherently disingenuous to cite the Green Books in the title of a feel-good film

The Green Books were Green’s effort to make the best of a terrible situation, and to offer some kind of freedom to a wide swath of the American population who were considered inferior to white people, not worthy of being treated as equals. In America, barely more than a half century ago, it was legal in some places to be hounded off the road because of your skin color, or to be turned away by a “No Negroes Allowed” sign in a hotel lobby.

In 2010, Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, told the New York Times that the Green Book “allowed families to protect their children, to help them ward off those horrible points at which they might be thrown out or not permitted to sit somewhere. It was both a defensive and a proactive mechanism.”

So as much as they’re a triumph of ingenuity and hard work, the Green Books represent something else: decades of great pain, and a history which ought to be regarded with shame.

That’s ultimately why Green Book feels wrongheaded to me, no matter how well-intentioned: The movie clearly exhibits Hollywood’s unfortunate tendency to elide reality when making movies about historical racism. It takes the name of an important artifact of history, one whose very existence was a result of prejudice and entrenched white supremacy, and makes it the basis for a broad comedy. It centers its story on a goofy, lovable white man who learns to be less racist after spending time with a black man who, though he’s aloof and unlikeable at first, becomes more “sympathetic” after he’s beaten up a few times.

And curiously, the two never talk about the Green Book itself — its history, its necessity, its very existence. Green Book ’s end credits show pictures of the two men and briefly explain what happened to Tony and Shirley after the tour, but never show or even mention the actual Green Books. That’s a bafflingly missed opportunity, given the very name of the film.

It also leans into the always-present danger that comes with movies about racism set in the past. They give audiences — particularly white ones that are eager to consider our era “post-racial” or “color-blind,” or who think black people keep pulling out the “race card” — the ability to leave the theater saying, Whew, the 1960s were a crazy time. Glad we fixed racism!

To be sure, there are a few scenes in which the movie overcomes this setup, to say something real about how expectations based on race, class, and identity can wreak havoc on a person’s soul. And at its best, Green Book may raise interest in the actual Green Books among viewers, particularly white audiences who’ve never heard of them before.

But borrowing the name of such a fraught piece of history and making a feel-good comedy about it, then failing to do that piece of history justice, is at best a misstep. At worst, it’s yet another example of Hollywood’s obliviousness and its willingness to feed into its audience’s self-satisfaction. As a piece of conventional Hollywood cinema, Green Book has plenty to recommend it. But as a film named for Victor Green’s books, it’s got a lot to answer for.

Green Book opens in limited theaters on November 16 and wide on November 21.

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Screen Rant

Green book review: driving dr. shirley.

Green Book is a delightful and inspiring story fueled by terrific performances by its leads, a sharp screenplay, and deft direction.

Green Book is a delightful and inspiring story fueled by terrific performances by its leads, a sharp screenplay, and deft direction.

Premiering at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival (where it took home the coveted 2018 People's Choice Award),  Green Book emerged as one of this year's leading and surprising Oscar contenders. The film is the latest work by director Peter Farrelly, best known as one half of the Farrelly brothers duo behind comedy hits like  Dumb and Dumber and  There's Something About Mary . Here, he makes the leap to different territory, chronicling a real-life friendship that blossomed during a tumultuous time for America. There might have been some fear that Farrelly would be out of his element, but that couldn't be further from the case.  Green Book is a delightful and inspiring story fueled by terrific performances by its leads, a sharp screenplay, and deft direction.

Green Book is set in 1962, picking up as working class Italian-American Tony "Lip" Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) finds himself needing new work after the Copacabana closes for two months due to renovations. As he looks around for a job to support his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) and two kids, Tony interviews for a driving position with Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali). Shirley, an African-American classical pianist, is set to tour the deep South and needs an associate to not only transport him to concert venues, but also act as security if any issues arise.

Even though the job will keep Tony away from his family for eight long weeks, the nice payday encourages him to take it. Promising Dolores he'll be home for Christmas, Tony hits the road with Dr. Shirley and the other two members of Shirley's musical trio, using the  Negro Motorist Green Book as a guide to find colored-friendly establishments at the various tour stops. Vallelonga and Shirley will have to work hard to overcome their personal differences and the injustices they'll face along the way. But it could be a very rewarding experience for both men, changing their lives for the better in more ways than one.

After its run at the festival circuit,  Green Book drew several comparisons to Best Picture winner  Driving Miss Daisy , leading some viewers to find it a bit safe and conventional in its storytelling and themes. There's no denying audiences should be able to plot out the narrative's trajectory in their heads, but that doesn't diminish the journey in the slightest. Tony Lip's son Nick Vallelonga is one of three credited co-writers (along with Farrelly and Brian Hayes Currie), which helps the film find its crucial sense of authenticity. While Nick didn't accompany his father and Shirley on the tour, the script no doubt takes inspiration from Tony's stories about his time in the South. The writing team deserves credit for blending comedy and drama, as  Green Book is never short on levity, yet still shines a spotlight on the rather serious and frustrating racial prejudices that were so prevalent in the segregation era. A number of clever callbacks and payoffs peppered throughout the script also ensure no scene goes to waste, as the film cruises through its runtime.

Farrelly specializes in gross-out humor that doesn't work for everyone, but he shows a refreshing constraint here, handling potentially sensitive subject matter with the grace and care it deserves. He tones down his usual sensibilities, with all of the comedy feeling natural and in-character. Collaborating with production designer Tim Galvin and cinematographer Sean Porter, the director also takes moviegoers straight back to the 1960s, drawing viewers in with its tone and aesthetic from the opening minutes. Farrelly definitely borrows from the Martin Scorsese playbook in places (the presence of the Copacabana will bring  Goodfellas to mind), employing a catchy soundtrack full of old school pop tunes to complement Shirley's virtuoso piano performances. But his approach doesn't come across as derivative, instead adding to the already captivating atmosphere.

For all the strong work by Farrelly and his crew, it's hard to imagine  Green Book working as well as it does without the presence of Mortensen and Ali. The two actors are a perfectly matched pair, playing off each other with great chemistry. Mortensen arguably has the showier role of the two, completely transforming into the larger-than-life figure of Tony Lip. After putting together a string of more serious-minded turns, it's nice to see the actor loosen up and have some fun as the street-wise bouncer. In a lesser thespian's hands, Tony Lip may have become a caricature, but Mortensen maintains Vallelonga's humanity throughout. Ali gives a reserved and soulful performance as Shirley, tapping into the character's inner turmoil of being a person torn between two worlds. He gives off a fittingly regal and sophisticated aura, but also has convincing dramatic outbursts to make it a well-rounded portrayal. Both leads have rightfully been in discussion for Oscar nominations and definitely deserve them.

With so much of the focus on Tony Lip and Dr. Shirley's dynamic, the supporting cast unfortunately gets lost in the background. Farrelly populates New York with other members of the Vallelonga family, and while they deliver a solid laugh or two during brief interludes in the second act, they aren't given much to work with. Even Cardellini (who makes the most of her short screen time) amounts to little more than the housewife missing her loving husband. To be fair, this is most likely a byproduct of the story's nature, rather than negligence on the part of the creative team. The crux of  Green Book's plot doesn't lend itself to being an ensemble piece, but it should be noted none of the actors are bad in their roles. They all do what's necessary, filling out the world Farrelly created. The lone exception is Dimiter D. Marinov as Oleg, a member of Shirley's trio, who has a few interactions with Tony Lip that hammer home some vital life lessons.

Green Book may not be as artistically daring or ambitious as some of 2018's other awards contenders, but it definitely lives up to the buzz and should be in the running for several major Oscars. The movie works on all fronts across the board, and its heartwarming story makes it the perfect film to catch over the Thanksgiving holiday. It could even be seen as the ideal antidote to today's divisive and trying times, depicting a touching tale of two people from wildly different backgrounds coming together and forging a lifelong bond. For cinephiles looking to keep up on the year's best as awards season heats up,  Green Book is worth seeing in theaters.

Green Book is now playing in U.S. theaters. It runs 130 minutes and is rated PG-13 for thematic content, language including racial epithets, smoking, some violence, and suggestive material.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!

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‘Green Book’ | Film Review

The Negro Motorist Green Book, or more commonly just known as Green Book , was developed by a New York City postal worker named Victor Hugo Green, so the emerging African-American middle class could take their newly-bought automobiles and travel the country when Jim Crow laws were still practiced widely across the South. This was a necessary help for non-white travelers who faced “sundown” hours, where you had to leave the area by nightfall to continue segregating people of color. By the time Jim Crow laws were outlawed in 1964 by the Civil Rights Act, the Green Book slowly disappeared into obscurity; one would think it still might be needed today.

In 1962, world-renowned and African-American pianist Dr. Don Shirley ( Moonlight’s Maherhala Ali) was about to begin an eight-week concert tour from New York City through the deep and very segregated South.  There won’t be a plane for him to fly in. He will be driving and interviews a man who can offer the kind of safe passage so he can come back unharmed or at the very least alive. He hires a not necessarily fast-talker, but a tough one named Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortenson), who needs the money to support his wife (Linda Cardellini) and two boys at home after being laid off for a couple of months from his bouncer gig at the Copa. The Green Book is handed to him to navigate through the south to Shirley’s record studio.

Tony is Italian-American, born and raised in the Bronx. Even with his limited education (reportedly dropped out of school in the sixth grade), he quietly appears to be more tolerant than most, especially his friends and family.  For instance, when sleeping after a long night at work, he wakes up to find his male friends and family watching the ball game in his living room.

READ: Movies like Green Book you must watch

When he asks them why they are there, they point to the kitchen, where two African-American men fix the plumbing, and Tony’s wife shouldn’t be left alone with them. When he sees them finish a drink of water that his wife gladly gave them while working on their kitchen, he is torn if he should follow his family’s old-world view while giving in to peer pressure and throw the glasses out or leave them in the sink. His wife later finds them in the garbage and is ashamed that he threw them in the can in the first place.

Green Book is based on a true story and isn’t just a backward Driving Miss Daisy , but a kindred spirit to Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple with Mortenson’s Tony as Oscar, who’s unkempt, a slob, and hasn’t found a plate of food he wouldn’t eat, while leaving a mess everywhere he goes. Ali’s Shirley is Felix, proper, trim, neat, so fussy you think he couldn’t sit in the back of the green Caprice without toppling over from the big-old stick stuck… if you catch my drift.

He puts himself on a pedestal throne, quite literally, and looks down at others, so much so he is worried when introduced Tony should change his last name to avoid it being mispronounced. Tony almost has a child-like nature while being a product of his time and environment that results in a narrow view of African-Americans, making for some snappy dialogue and humorous moments that move the film at a brisk pace.

The performances in the film are tremendous. Mahershala Ali is a wonderful actor who shows a level of vulnerability unmatched by many of his peers. He plays Shirley with quiet dignity while depicting a subtle tortured soul who uses alcohol to self-medicate the loneliness he feels not only from segregated “white” America but also among members of his own race. He is a shoo-in for an Academy Award nomination, and I would argue it’s a lead performance.

On the flip side of that coin, I continue to be amazed by Viggo Mortensen’s innate ability to disappear into any character he takes on. From playing the heir to Isildur, a mobster who made a new life for himself in a small town, an anarchist turned survivalist who reintroduces himself to the world, or a Russian strong-arm man, there is nothing he can’t morph into seamlessly, and without asking the viewer to leap of faith.

Peter Farrelly, a man, is known for such comedy classic ’90s gross-out comedies ( There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin) , directed and co-wrote Green Book, shows a deft touch previously not seen in his other works. His film is for the hopeless romantic moviegoer in all of us and not the cold-hearted cynic. It’s for the viewer that still believes in films that look for the good in people, in any situation, under harsh circumstances, and allow that feeling to wash over them.  If you are the former, despite the one-sided view the film might take through Tony’s eyes (the film is co-produced and written by his son Nick Vallelonga), give into Farrelly’s film, and your best bet is to let it wash over you as well.

Interesting side note: when the credits roll and pictures of the real subjects appear on screen, if the real-life Tony Vallelonga, AKA Tony Lip, looks familiar, he should. He turned to act and is the same man who played Carmine Lupertazzi in The Sopranos.  Who knew he had such an intimate knowledge of the book from firsthand experience. With that, Paul Harvey might say, “good day.”

Article by Marc Miller

Marc Miller (also known as M.N. Miller) joined Ready Steady Cut in April 2018 as a Film and TV Critic, publishing over 1,600 articles on the website. Since a young age, Marc dreamed of becoming a legitimate critic and having that famous “Rotten Tomato” approved status – in 2023, he achieved that status.

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By Tina Jordan

• Oct. 5, 2018

In Hank Green’s debut novel , “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing” — which debuts on the fiction list at No. 1 — 23-year-old April May, coming home from work late one night in New York City, stumbles upon an enormous metal sculpture planted on the sidewalk, “a 10-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor, its huge barrel chest lifted up to the sky.” She and a friend shoot a video of it, which they upload to YouTube, and go to bed. By the next morning, the video has gone viral, transforming April into an internet celebrity.

Green, who introduces himself on his website by saying diffidently, “I’m Hank, I do a bunch of stuff . I’m actually pretty sleepy,” knows a thing or two about internet fame: “Since 2007, my brother and I have been making videos back and forth to each other (and several hundred thousand people) on a YouTube channel called Vlogbrothers .”

Green tapped into his own experiences — and those of friends — for April’s story. “If you have exceptional experiences, why not use them?” he says, describing how his interview with Barack Obama played out in a scene where April talks to the president.

“An Absolutely Remarkable Thing” started out as a graphic novel back in 2013, “but I realized I was waiting for the perfect artist and if I kept doing that, it would never get written,” Green says. So he plunged in. “Yes, it’s about the dark side of fame on the internet, but it’s about the dark side of fame in general, the weirdness of it. Notoriety is such a prized thing. Society suddenly wants your opinion on things — everyone from your mom to an editor at The New York Times.”

[ The Times traveled to VidCon, the conference for online video makers that was started by Hank Green and his brother, John ].

As Green wrote, online culture grew ever more poisonous. Of one of the book’s minor characters, an evil internet troll, he says, “When I first started writing, I thought, ‘this one is a bit over the top.’ I didn’t want him to be hackneyed and boring. And then the world caught up with the book.”

Green says, “Everyone talks about how the anonymity of the internet allows people to behave badly, but I think it’s the other way around, that the anonymity removes the ‘self’ from the people we’re talking to online. Other people lose their humanity in our eyes. The system is set up to dehumanize.” Is it fixable? “We forget all the time how very new this all is,” he says, “and that we might not have the norms to handle it.”

He’s already at work on a sequel. “The whole time I was writing this book, I had strong ideas about where it was going — and then I finished before I got there.”

Follow Tina Jordan on Twitter: @TinaJordanNYT

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Green Book review: Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali give this civil rights fairy tale a lift

Both actors give such nuanced performances that audiences will swallow the sentimental moralising of peter farrelly's oscar-nominated film , article bookmarked.

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Dir: Peter Farrelly; Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Dimeter Marinov, Mike Hatton, Iqbal Theba. Cert 12A, 130 mins

If there were Oscars for eating hot dogs, Viggo Mortensen would win this year’s award hands down (and mouth stuffed). Mortensen gives a wonderful, method-style performance as Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga, a wiseguy nightclub bouncer from the Bronx who becomes the driver for black virtuoso pianist Don Shriley ( Mahershala Ali ) on a tour of the deep south in the early Sixties.

Green Book flatters the audience about its own good sense and tolerance. It deals with racism and homophobia but still has a fairytale, fantasy feel to it. Whatever humiliations Don endures on their road trip, we know no real harm will ever come to him as long as Tony is at his side. This is a film about friendship as much as it is about civil rights. We can also safely predict that the pair’s better qualities will rub off on each other: Tony will overcome his prejudices while Don will learn not to be quite such a cultural snob.

Mortensen plays Tony as a hedonistic, impulsive brawler. He is a likeable everyman in spite of his prejudices, but he is also an opportunist who will do anything for a buck. His temperament could not be more different to that of his new boss, the refined and aloof classically-trained musician. Don – nicknamed “the doctor” – is very fussy, very particular. “He plays like Liberace but better,” it is said of him at one stage.

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Mortensen is the Sancho Panza figure to the very refined Don Quixote type played beautifully by Ali. And they make quite a double act, providing an emotional charge to a film that might otherwise have seemed trite and manipulative.

The film is crude and delicate by turns. Farrelly is known for the often very broad comedies like There’s Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber he directs with his brother, Bobby. Some of the gags and visual observations here could come from such works. For example, early on, in order to show the audience that Tony is an unreconstructed racist, there is a long drawn-out scene in which he picks up water glasses that black repairmen have drunk out of as if they are contaminated and drops them in the garbage.

Tony and Ali head off from New York on an epic road trip with the rest of Ali’s band following in the car behind. In the course of the journey, Tony marvels at “nature” and pines for his wife. Don dictates the fulsome, heartfelt letters he writes to her. The pianist also gives his driver tips on diction, etiquette and provides Sunday school-style lectures on why stealing is wrong.

The film’s title comes from a handbook for African-American drivers, telling them just what to do to stay out of trouble in the Jim Crow south. Don gives Tony a copy – and so the white, Italian-American gets a taste of the black motorist’s experience.

• Viggo Mortensen defends controversial Oscar frontrunner Green Book

The film is full of reversals and ironies like this. Again and again during the journey, each man’s preconceptions are challenged. The further south they head, the more prejudice they encounter. Don’s musical virtuosity is generally applauded by the white spectators but that doesn’t mean he is allowed to use the same bathrooms or stay in the same motels.

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Don is an elegant, cerebral figure, steeped in classical music but unaware of the Aretha Franklin and James Brown, music that his driver cherishes. He drinks a specific brand of whisky, and won’t play on anything other than a Steinway. While he sits in the back, Tony is at the wheel, grease from his fried food running down his chin, chattering away. “You people love fried chicken,” he tells his boss in one of the casually racist remarks he makes throughout the first part of the film – but he is the one who eats such food. Indeed, there is barely a scene in the film in which he isn’t devouring chicken wings or sausages or whatever other convenience food is available.

There are some strange digressions and inconsistencies in characterisation, however. For all his meticulousness, Don acts in very erratic fashion. He gets drunk, and his sexual escapades land him in jail. He may be perceptive enough about relationships to know just what Tony should write to his wife but he is a loner who doesn’t have a partner of his own. There is a masochistic fatalism to him that the film touches on but doesn’t want to explore too deeply.

Don embarks on the tour out of defiance: he wants to confront southern racism head on. He shows courage and heroic restraint in the way he deals with his white hosts. But at the same time, he is painfully naïve, and when it comes to street smarts, Tony is the virtuoso. He knows how to face down thugs in a bar.

Green Book is based on a true story but has clearly taken considerable liberties with its source material. It eventually turns into a full-blown Christmas movie, with all the usual trimmings. The doc’s one-man campaign for racial equality is forgotten as the two men make their epic journey back north, and the film begins to turn as mushy as the winter weather they encounter en route. The underlying message here is similar to that in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life in which we learn “no man is a failure who has friends”. There is room at the Christmas table for everyone.

The sugarcoating is very thick. It doesn’t matter, though. Ali and Mortensen make a tremendously engaging odd couple. Both give such nuanced and well-observed performances that most audiences will swallow the sentimental moralising as easily as Tony digests his hot dogs.

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