Did your teachers ever give you shit for using the word âniceâ in your written assignments? Well, Green Book is a nice movie, and Iâm a professional writer now, so the jokeâs on you, teachers!
Thatâs really the only word for it: nice. Green Book tells the supposedly true story of a black jazz pianist, Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), and his white driver, Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), as they go on a concert tour through the segregated South in 1962.
Although theyâre both from New York, theyâre from entirely different worlds: Shirley (or âDoc,â as Tony calls him) moves through the rarified air of highbrow culture, living in an apartment above Carnegie Hall where he perches on a literal throne. Tony, on the other hand, is an Italian American stereotype made sentient, a âwhattsamattayouâ tough guy with a tenderly soft underbelly (quite literallyâthere are probably only two scenes in the movie that donât have Mortensen lustily stuffing some sort of food into his maw).
The problem is that, when he first meets the Doc, Tony doesnât like black people so much. Hey, heâs an Italian from Queens! Thatâs how dey do it ovah der! So Green Bookâs biggest red flag is that itâs essentially another Driving Miss Daisy story about how to solve racism in three convenient acts. If only every racist white guy could go with a patient, thoughtful black man on a two-month tour of the Deep South!
But like I said, the movieâs really nice, and itâs hard to get too mad at it. Ali and Mortensen are both awfully good, and the script, for all its familiarity, is kind of comforting in its shticky predictability. Best of all, Don Shirley isnât the type of character we ever see in these movies: Heâs prickly, snobbish, and deeply troubled, dealing with alcoholism, homosexuality, and a music industry that doesnât really have a place for his unconventional talent. Heâs wise, but not a âmagical black man,â and his character arc is substantially more significant than Tonyâs.
A lot of people are going to like Green Book. Itâs a good holiday movie, ideally suited for seeing with family members who might need a little prodding to be open-minded; it makes its obvious case for tolerance and friendship, then bows and leaves. Sure, itâs got some substantial problems, and it elides a lot of racial issues and nuances in order to sell a feel-good story. It probably wouldnât have flown in the Obama era. But in the Trump era? Maybe we should take what we can get. 
