Green Book Review

Peter Farrelly, working from a script co-written by Tony Lip's son Nick Vallelonga, shapes the tour as an odd-couple comedy: the brash bouncer who folds a whole pizza in half and eats it, the fastidious pianist who has never touched fried chicken. Viggo Mortensen plays Tony broad and warm, and Mahershala Ali, who won his second Oscar, gives Don Shirley a loneliness the script only half understands. The scene in the rain, where Shirley says he is not black enough, not white enough and not man enough, is the best thing in the film.

The rest is tidier than its subject. Each stop on the tour delivers its lesson on schedule, Tony's casual racism dissolves over a few hundred miles, and Shirley's inner life arrives filtered through the man who drove him. Wesley Morris called it a racial reconciliation fantasy, and Shirley's family objected that the friendship was overstated.

It won Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, becoming the fifth Best Picture winner without a directing nomination, and audiences gave it a rare A plus CinemaScore. As a crowd pleaser it works; as history it is a comfortable one.