Greenfingers
**1/2
Cinema
Releases - September 14, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 91
minutes. Written and directed by Joel Hershman. Starring Clive Owen, Helen
Mirren, Warren Clarke, David Dyer, Adam Fogerty.
"Greenfingers" tells the true story
of a British open prison whose inmates started a small gardening programme
and ended up with an honourable mention at the Hampton Court Palace Flower
Show. It's a cute little comedy, which is exactly what I expected it to be,
but at times it shows glimpses of higher promise, and then fails to deliver
on them.
Clive Owen stars as a cagey inmate serving a
manslaughter sentence; he once caught his brother en flagrante with his
fiancée, punched him a little too hard, and ended up having to live
with the consequences. He doesn't want to make any friends in the nick, and
would prefer to be locked away and never let out; but he ends up getting
moved to a minimum-security facility and finding himself drawn to a frail
old Irish crook played by David Kelly, who you will recognise as the skinny
fella from "Waking Ned".
The mechanics of the screenplay wind up seeing
Owen and Kelly setting up a flower garden in the prison, surrounded by familiar
figures from the Big Book of Prison Movie Clichés, such as the big
guy, the black guy and the young punk. The kid falls for one of the prison
tea girls, and Owen begins a romance with a local woman (Natasha Little)
who enlists the help of the convict flower arrangers and whose mother is
a famed writer of gardening books played by Helen Mirren.
Mirren helps the boys take their floral skills
to national attention, while the kid and his lady friend go through some
taxing dilemmas, and more depth comes to the surface in Owen's relationships
with Kelly and Little. There are times in "Greenfingers" where you can really
tell that it was inspired by true events, that the fascinating Owen was not
miscast, that the spirit of reality was driving the writers to create something
thoughtful. The movie is not content with being ineffectual and twee, and
attempts to create some properly touching drama.
Thing is, it fails. Ultimately the overriding
mood in "Greenfingers" is that of a cutesy little British picture,
and the fact that it shoots for more means that cuteness is not enough. I
feel bad about not giving three stars to the film, but seeing as "There's
Something About Mary" and "Bread and Roses" didn't get there either, I think
I can live with it.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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