This is an affable, charming, warm comedy-drama with interesting characters, fine actors, and some good gardening tips. However, Britain has a new genre of movie these days (I noticed the same thing with The Full Monty, fun as that one was) which is the charming, obstacle-free ascension fable. In this genre, The Full Monty has things going for it which Greenfingers did not, which is bawdy humor, deeper drama, and snappy musical numbers. But, sadly, from a storytelling perspective,Greenfingers is a smooth, painless ride into unlikely bliss.
Clive Owen plays Colin Briggs, the titular greenfingers, who is a criminal of uncertain degree put into a progressive prison, where he haplessly falls into gardening. Everything happens from this point on with Swiss precision and then the movie is over. Certainly, there are ups and downs. David Kelly (from Waking Ned Devine, whose presence onscreen actually caused a murmur to ripple through my small weeknight audience) is a sweet old man and a fascinating character, whom every recognizes as such, thus negating his specialness with regards to audience empathy.
Colin is closed off and surly, and then he is greenfingered and closed off, and then, with no change of expression, is fully alive and thriving. I was charmed at spots, I laughed at spots, but mostly I saw points where the story needed to take a turn to keep me interested - the young lovers needed to be thwarted in some way, or the system needed to shut the program down, or something - anything. None of that happened, and everything went swimmingly. Very disappointing.
While, of course, we go to movies to see people achieve what we can only dream of, or overcome insurmountable odds, or find love despite destiny's sense of humor, or whatever, this is not always enough. The hero in a story is the person with the most to lose, or with the most to gain. Since Colin is so abrasive and unpleasant at the beginning, in order to sympathize with him, I needed to root for him, have some reason to care about him. He has nothing to lose, because he cares for nothing, and nothing to gain, because he is happy where he is. Except inasmuch as other characters decided to care for him (so did I, by extension, because I cared for them) he was no one I wanted to spend two hours with in a dark room, no matter how charming the subject matter. I didn't care, and I wanted to, and that is movie's flaw.
However, there are some laughs, and David Kelly is of course lovely, as is Helen Mirren, in a British sort of Martha Stewart persona, and it's worth seeing, just not worth paying too much. Lovely flowers, excellent and obscure dialects to study, and breezy flower show gowns, but it's all too easy. Most times the joy is in the journey, but here the joy must be merely the outcome.
Rental Price.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2001 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. cinerina@flash.net Check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/ - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource http://www.mediamotions.com http://www.capitol-city.com
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