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Driving Miss Daisy on DVD (1989)
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Radio Times
This small, unassuming movie went up against the big guns of Hollywood and emerged with a best picture Oscar and a hefty profit. Based on the 1987 one-act play by Alfred Uhry, it charts the deepening relationship between an elderly widow and her black chauffeur in Atlanta. Miss Daisy, played by the Oscar-winning Jessica Tandy, is an independent former schoolteacher with a will of iron, until she crashes her new car and cannot get insurance on another. So her son (Dan Aykroyd) arranges a permanent chauffeur, the widower Hoke, played by Morgan Freeman. Although Miss Daisy is Jewish and regards herself as without racial prejudice, Hoke must gradually win acceptance and put up with her tirades from the back of the gleaming Hudson. The story covers the years from 1948 until 1973 — a period of racial strife and the civil rights movement — attaining the status of allegory in the process. But Australian director Bruce Beresford, who was unaccountably left out of the Oscar nominations, does not push things over the edge: although we see and hear events about Martin Luther King and bombings, this remains a character study, and a superb one. Tandy ages from 72 to 97 and comes across as a stubborn, tetchy but extremely likeable woman. And Freeman, who was in the Broadway stage version, adds layers of irony and wit to what could so easily have been a role of suffering saintliness. Time Out Beresford and writer Alfred Uhry have produced a polished adaptation of the latter's play, but it's the sharp... Read more on www.timeout.com
Old-fashioned and charming, but slight to the point of inconsequentiality. Members ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |
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