Green Book  ★★★½

COMEDY writer/director Peter Farrelly has struck gold with Green Book.

It’s hard to believe this 2019 story of friendship over coming race and class divisions is from one half of the team previously renowned for films like Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary, The Heartbreak Kid, Stuck on You and Movie 43.

Apart from the abysmal Movie 43, one of the worst comedies ever made, most of the Farrelly brothers’ efforts have been funny, entertaining and successful.

But there is little in any of those films that suggested the heart and intellect of Green Book.

To his clear advantage, Farrelly had an excellent script to work from, written by Brian Currie and Nick Vallelonga whose father is one of the main characters.

We meet Tony ‘Lip’ Vallelonga in 1962 when he is working as a bouncer at the Copacabana nightclub in New York.

within the first 10 minutes of the film Tony viciously beats a man he does not know and ingratiates himself with another man of influence.

Later it turns out the man Tony beat up was ‘connected’ to a family and Tony is lucky not to be in big trouble.

so we know this straight-talking husband and father from a poor Italian family and Bronx neighbourhood is prone to violence without thinking but at the same time is street-smart and not to be under-estimated.

Like many others from his upbringing, Tony is also a racist. perhaps not in an overt manner, but it’s entrenched in his thinking.

so when the nightclub closes for renovations Tony faces a dilemma. He can easily take strong-arm work from a gang boss, but he has previously left the criminal life behind him.

Tony interviews for a lucrative job driving a rich guy around for three months. However, the guy in question is a world-class African-American pianist Dr Don Shirley and it’s a concert tour of the Deep South.

I forgot to mention the film is based on an actual relationship between the two men who start the journey at absolute opposite poles in every manner but find a way to respect and appreciate each other’s backgrounds, opinions and beliefs.

despite their differences each has a fundamental belief in every man being afforded to right to live equally and fairly and their mutual disgust and anger at the way Dr Shirley is treated brings them ultimately together.

the humour in Green Book is broad and very entertaining, wonderfully enhanced by the acting of Viggo Mortensen as Tony and Mahershala Ali as Dr Shirley.

the chemistry between the two extends further than humour, however, and the best moments of the film are those where one character or the other quietly comes to a realisation and understanding of the other’s failings and how these are also strengths and attributes.

Some aspects of the film are confusing – if Tony is so racist, why does he take the job in the first place? – but I suspect these would have been further explained in a longer film.

While there is predictability in the inevitable outcome, you can only tell the story as it appeared to actually happen.

These failings ar small and overcome by the terrific performances. Aside from the recent Captain Fantastic, Mortensen’s most memorable performances have generally been in thought dramas like Eastern Promises and A History of Violence.

Ali is a relative newcomer by comparison who shot to prominence a couple of years ago with his stunning, sensitive performance in Barry Levinson’s academy Award winning Best Film Moonlight.

This year’s awards might just be another winning night for Ali and the director of Dumb and Dumber 1 and 2. Go figure?