"Driving Miss Daisy" Throwback Review

I feel that people's opinion towards this film is shaped more by mob mentality than their own reaction. I'll admit, I had my reservations to watching this.

Driving Miss Daisy should not have won Best Picture in 1989, like how an Olympic diver should not win gold for completing a pencil dive. The film is too safe and undaunting to deserve the acclaim that it has received. But it does nail that pencil dive so damn well.

Roger Ebert said that the movies act like an empathy machine. We are able to see inside the movie and know the characters and their story. Driving Miss Daisy does this to absolute perfection as we progress through history with our two lead characters.

This is not a "white savior" film, or even a "magical negro" film. It's movie about two people who learn that they have a lot more in common once they look under the surface. Director Bruce Beresford steadily sets each scene and lets the charming chemistry of Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman do the work.

There is nothing surprising within the film's narrative, with everything falling into place all too neatly. The only act of anguish occurs off camera.

I'm not going to defend this film and say that people who don't like it are wrong. I just think that film doesn't deserve the premeditated hate that it gets due to the random chance that it releases within the same year as the superior Do the Right Thing.

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