A feel-good film that actually works: Green Book

Okay to Peter Farrelly's Green Book (2018) is about the one-millionth road trip-buddy movie in which two seeming opposites (2 guys, 2 gals, one of each) come to loike and appreciate (or even fall in love w/) each other as they overcome various obstacles. And okay, so Green Book is the cinematic equivalent of Newton's Law, every action leads to an equal and opposite reaction, so if a gun is introduced early on it will go off before the final scene and if the wife says "you better be home by xmas" there will be a made dash through the snow to make it from Birmingham to NYC just in time and if ... I could go on. Yes, it's totally predictable; and yet ... it's also totally watchable and  enjoyable, with plenty of tension and plenty of light comedy, too, along the way. And it's also a social commentary, based on - or as the opening credit puts it - inspired by - a true story. Farrelly,who earned his comic chops in such early, hilarious moves as Something About Mary and Dumb & Dumber, shows great comic pacing throughout and he gets terrific performances from the leads, Maharshala Ali as jazz/pop pianist Don Shirley and Vigo Mortensen Tony (Lip) Vallelonga. As actually happened, Shirly hires Tony Lip to be his triver on a concert tour that concludes in the Deep South (in 1961), where they encounter various forms of suspicion, hostility, and outright racism. The two men completely differ in personality and background, and their presence freaks out a # of people in the South and elsewhere, as they cannot understand a black man's being the "boss" of a white man. You can easily figure out how things will develop, but that still leaves space for a few really good scenes (notably, the arrest of the two when Tony assaults an officer, Don Shirley's helping Tony write letters home to his wife, and the tense moments in a private dining club in Birmingham) and of course we expect to hear Don Shirley place some classical pieces - his true passion, though he was discouraged from pursuing a classical career), and Farrelly doesn't disappoint us there, either. I usually don't feel good about feel-good films, but this one is an exception,;hard not to like it.