Driving Miss Daisy
"Close to perfection. To see it once is to remember it forever." -Gene Shalit, Today/NBC-TV
Hoke Colburn sits in the front seat with his hands on the steering wheel, but the driver's seat is behind him. That's where Miss Daisy sits. She doesn't want a chauffeur and she won't give in. And neither will Hoke.
Alfred Uhry's moving Pulitzer Prize-winning play became 1989's Academy Award-winning Best Picture. Driving Miss Daisy tells of genteel but strong-willed Atlanta matron Daisy (Best Actress Oscar winner Jessica Tandy) and her patient but equally determined chauffeur Hoke (Morgan Freeman). For two people so different, they have a lot in common. And the bumpy road they travel ultimately leads to the friendship of a lifetime. From the film's nine Oscar nominations, it drove off with two more awards: Best Adaptation Screenplay (Uhry) and Makeup.
Member Reviews
Massively Overrated - KevinJaques
It's definitely a GOOD movie. Dan Akroyd and Morgan Freeman are ever so nice and completely plausible in the situation. Jessica Tandy acts her ass off, conveying conflicted emotions distinct from her words all through it. The sets are exquisitely and plausibly detailed. The mansion is gorgeous. The dialogue is plausible. Nothing stops you from falling into it, allowing it to become a reality for a couple hours. It makes some points about race and bigotry that are more subtle than bigotry is bad.
You should see it. But Best Picture!? Hardly. It's glacially slow. There is virtually no wit. There are no lines you would ever want to quote. There's no thought or theme that hasn't been done before. Weirdly, it won a Golden Globe for best comedy/musical. There is neither humour nor music at all! Somebody must have just felt obliged to give it something.
Maybe that's it. People in the US just felt obliged to like it. Maybe their society needed this message that races and religions can be positive to each other even while their hearts still need more cleansing. So they needed to loudly praise it, to get that message spread. But don't be fooled. It's a 3 star, tops.
And get this. I had watched it ten years prior, and had absolutely no recollection of it. Talk about forgettable!Another great performance from Morgan - LittleJoe
Some might think this just to be an average movie, not much action, somewhat of a good storyline... But really give this one a chance and put yourself in the scenes. You'll soon see how touching this story really is. It's not always in what is said which comes from the script. A lot of times it's the little body movements from the actors that make the scenes really come alive. Morgan can really do that. The feeding the pie scene... one of the most touching scenes you can find.
Really this movie is worth the time to watch if you really are one that doesn't need a constant barrage of explosions, foul language and tons of special effects.
Instead great special effects happen when a movie really touches the soul. This one does.Not bad movie - hunkmtl
Capsule review: Good but disappointing story (after its reputation) of a cantankerous, aging Southern woman and the chauffeur hired for her over her protests. Good performances but the mechanics of the play that should make us care for these characters and convince us that two decades are really passing are strangely absent. Rating: low +2.
Daisy Werthan is at war with the world and the world does not even notice it. At 72 she is still desperately holding on to her dignity, but she is having increasing problems interfacing with the world. Her response is to lash out at anyone around and then go back to her lonely, insular world. As the film opens she is preparing to drive herself somewhere, only to end up wrecking her car instead. Her son decides it is time to hire someone to do her driving for her, but she wants no part of the plan. Her son hires Hoke Colburn for the job, but Daisy refuses to give him anything to do, at least at first. DRIVING MISS DAISY covers in all too short a span of minutes the next two decades of so of the relationship of Daisy and Hoke. We see both reacting to the prejudice around them against each's group: racism against Hoke's race, anti-Semitism against Daisy's religion. Hoke tries to be sympathetic. Daisy does not try as hard. Most of her impulses are selfish.
DRIVING MISS DAISY seems to be a sentimental favorite for Oscar nominations this year, but in some ways it is a disappointment. The film's screenplay is by Alfred Uhry, based on his Broadway play and it is perhaps his writing that gives the film both its best aspects and its greatest flaws. In the course of the film it is obvious why Daisy, portrayed by Jessica Tandy, is so unpleasant. But the unpleasantness is so rarely relieved that understanding why she is the way she is is not enough. It perhaps is realistic that Daisy is so rarely likable, but it is dramatically unsatisfying. Perhaps she is more than one-dimensional, but she is less than three. Perhaps the story
Member Reviews
Read All...
Massively Overrated - KevinJaques
It's definitely a GOOD movie. Dan Akroyd and Morgan Freeman are ever so nice and completely plausible in the situation. Jessica Tandy acts her ass off, conveying conflicted emotions distinct from her words all through it. The sets are exquisitely and plausibly ...Another great performance from Morgan - LittleJoe
Some might think this just to be an average movie, not much action, somewhat of a good storyline... But really give this one a chance and put yourself in the scenes. You'll soon see how touching this story really is. It's not always in what is said which comes ...Not bad movie - hunkmtl
Capsule review: Good but disappointing story (after its reputation) of a cantankerous, aging Southern woman and the chauffeur hired for her over her protests. Good performances but the mechanics of the play that should make us care for these characters and ...