Two days ago I got information from my wife that there was a special screening event of the movie which got multiple Academy Awards nomination and won Golden Globes awards as well on Tuesday. As it would only premier in Indonesian theaters today, it was nice of us to catch a glimpse of this outstanding movie earlier. The event itself was held in CGV Grand Indonesia and scheduled to start at 7 PM. After few minutes of introduction and 2 movie trailers, it began at 7.15 PM.
Brief Story Line
Tony Vallelonga aka Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen - The Lord of the Rings trilogy, A History of Violence etc) was an Italian-American bouncer who worked in a night club. But when it was closed for renovation, he had to look for various odd jobs to support his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini - A Simple Favor, Daddy's Home 2 etc) and his 2 small kids Nick and Frankie.
As luck would have it, due to his well known ability to "solve" problems, he was offered the job to drive for a famous & well educated black pianist named Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali - Luke Cage TV series, Hidden Figures etc) during his tour for eight weeks from Mid West to deep South America. It would be a huge challenge for Tony who was not a big fan for the colored people and to make sure Doc was kept out of trouble for the whole trip. Especially during the period of 1960s where racism was still a huge part in the American society. Tony was also given a Green Book which was filled with list of location and places allowed for the colored to stay and visit.
So what would happen to these two people who could not have been more different on an eight week trip? Find them all in this really wonderful comedy drama movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Wow, this was truly a great comedy drama movie. When my wife and I saw the trailer to this movie first time, we really thought that it would be a really heavy drama movie which was the usual characteristic of multiple awards nominee & winner film. Turned out though this was a movie which was filled with so many comedic moments and the drama was not that heavy. It was a complete fun and totally enjoyable.
The movie's main attraction was actually the performances of two actors who really amazed us. One was Viggo Mortensen, a guy who would always be remembered by me as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In here he portrayed an Italian American guy who was a family man and full of tricks. What really made me in awe was he was able to transform himself into such a character with his heavy Italian accent while he himself was a Danish-American. And he purposely put on a lot of weight to make his appearance even more convincing (which made us unable to recognize him at first when we saw the trailer). His body language and his face expressions were totally wonderful. At one point of time, my wife noticed he could show amazed expression just in split second.
The other one was Mahershala Ali who had also portrayed many amazing roles that won him several awards (including in this film where he won Golden Globe award for supporting role). He was also as impressive as Viggo in here where he could show his "royal-like" attitude and there was also one scene where his awkwardly shy but amusing expression really made us laughed. These two great actors have got a really fantastic chemistry. We could really picture them as a couple of different strong personalities unified and becoming great friends during their trip. And the addition of Tony's wife Dolores also gave a warm feeling to us.
There were so many memorable moments in this 130 minutes movie which did not feel that long (even my wife probably forgotten that she wanted to go to the rest room since early part of the movie, because she was so absorbed with the film). The movie was focusing on the odd relationship of these two characters, combined with some racism which were shown in short scenes with great effects and gave powerful message (such as the bath room scene in one of the house, or the restaurant scene and few others). The comedic moments here were not the slapstick type, but more due to the situations they were in and obviously the completely different personalities who had to adapt with one another. One of my most favorite moment was the one involving the Fried Chicken.
I really loved the way this movie flowed so smoothly from an imaginable awkward moments in the beginning to a lovely friendship formed between these two. It had a great ending and the end credit scene even showed us the real life Tony Lip and Doc Shirley as well (no other mid or post end credit scenes though). The movie was written by Peter Farrelly, Brian Currie and Tony's son Nick Vallelonga. It was directed by Peter Farrelly himself (who together with his brother Bobby formed the Farrelly brothers and had directed some comedy/romantic/drama movies such as Dumb and Dumber, Shallow Hal, There's Something About Mary and few others).
Overall this was a great movie and a nice option for the more casual audience (like me and my wife) who wanted to enjoy a Academy Awards Best Picture nominee which was not the really heavy kind. It was filled with many joyous moments where we could laugh out loud, be inspired by the lovely friendship, and even got powerful message of racism without being overly lectured. By far, this is one of the best movies I had ever seen in my life.
Mike's movie moments rating: 5 out of 5 stars
A big thank you from us to Rivki from CGV who had invited us to this wonderful event and we were really fortunate being part of the audience given the opportunity to see this movie before its premiere date. We really appreciate it and look forward to future events.
Some pictures from last night's event held in the biggest auditorium in CGV called Starium, with the really big screen, great sound system and unique ambiance.
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