Greenfingers
Greenfingers | |
| Director: | Joel Hershman |
| Cast: | Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, David Kelly |
| Genre: | Film, Drama |
You could say we Anglophiliac Yanks had it coming: After Brassed Off, The Full Monty, and Waking Ned Devine, we ought not expect more triumphant tales suffused with tears and laughter from those tiny islands across the pond. But the Anglo-Irish cinematic enchantment keeps coming. Perhaps with Greenfingers, a perfectly amiable if utterly predictable look at the life-affirming virtues of gardening, it's time to say enough. In a minimum-security prison in Britain's sumptuous Cotswold region, tough murderer Colin (Croupier's chiseled Clive Owen) becomes besotted by plants, through the generosity of his new cellmate, old-timer Fergus (David Kelly of Waking Ned Devine). This pleasant, faintly unusual premise feels calculated, though, and that feeling persists after other prisoners reluctantly become involved and eventually grow enthralled with the notion of forming a garden club. Horticulture expert Georgina Woodhouse (a happily slumming Helen Mirren) swoops in with her precocious daughter, the aptly named Primrose (Natasha Little), to teach the prisoners the secrets of gardening and to warm Colin's cold heart. Toss in a garde -show competition, spice with inevitable melodramatics and a few tears, and you have not exactly another little indie gem guaranteed to make Yanks weep but a group of stereotypes in formulaic material. (Luisa F. Ribeiro) At the Charles Theatre.