So I put off watching this for a long while but I knew I had to eventually due to its winning multiple Oscars and the controversy that engendered about this being an undeserved win. It’s just part of being involved in the cultural conversation. In the end, my opinion falls in line with the other critics. It’s a sweet and decently made film but the time when something like this could be considered one of the best films of the year should be long gone.

Tony Lip usually works as a bouncer in New York but searches for temporary employment when his club is shut down for renovations. He is referred to pianist Don Shirley, a black man who is doing an 8-week concert tour that will take him into the Deep South. As such, Shirley wants to hire someone who can only drive but can help him get out of the inevitable trouble travelling through strongly prejudiced areas will bring. Tony himself seems to harbor a certain low-key racism against black people but the two predictably grow closer as they travel together. On the road, they are forced to refer to the Green Book which lists restaurants and hotels that cater to black people in the south. Shirley also insists on Lip keeping to a higher level of civility and decorum while also helping the latter write more eloquent letters to his wife back home. Meanwhile Lip sees that while Shirley is wealthy and widely lauded as a musician, he remains a black man once off the stage.

Since this did win multiple awards, it’s only to be expected that it’s competently shot and has solid performances by its two leads. It’s problem is that just as it is set in the 1960s, it has the sensibilities and tone of a bygone era. This is a film that is so conservative and safe that it comes close to being offensive. Every beat of the plot is predictable and all problems have neat solutions. The story even has the temerity of ending with a Christmas dinner which is such a trite note. It may be sweet and crowd pleasing but Lip abruptly leaving behind his initial prejudices is simply the stuff of fairy tales. There are all sorts of little stories in here which are entertaining to watch and good for a chuckle, like Lip being astonished that Shirley knows so little about popular black musicians or him going against the stereotype to teach Shirley how to enjoy eating fried chicken. But they are just that, fun little stories that in no way ring true and are too shallow to be part of a serious drama.

There are any number of ways that this film could have been better. Apart from the obvious of simply having the courage to show the grim reality of racism instead of watering it down, there’s the fact despite it being ostensibly a duo film, this one is actually centered only around the character of Tony Lip. The camera maintains a distance from Don Shirley, such that the audience is meant to slowly get to know him just as Tony does. The problem is that we never actually get close enough. It’s left to the other two members of Don’s trio to explain to him the pianist’s motivations, Don’s dilemma of being caught between the two worlds of being both not white enough and not black enough is clumsily covered only in a rain-soaked tirade and not actually shown and so on. The director has no difficulty bringing the character of Tony Lip to life but Don Shirley remains a distant, enigmatic figure even from Tony himself. That’s part of why the dramatic balance seems off and the relationship feels fake.

I’ve never paid attention to director Peter Farrelly’s name before but it turns out that he was responsible for Jim Carrey’s Dumb and Dumber movies. This film seems to mark quite a change from his earlier body of work. It is a good change and this is not a terrible film. But it’s also obvious that this should not have won the Oscars and that is an indictment of the Academy’s conservative, old-fashioned tastes.