Highly Overrated

Rating: Null/10 (25 February 2000)

I guess when you hear Frank Darabont is making a Stephen King prison-movie, you can't avoid comparison with the vastly superior Shawshank Redemption, but the fact is that the only thing combining theses two movies are those three things.
Green Mile is a triumph in camera-work, direction and acting. The movies visual look is outstanding, and the actors deliver good performances. This is much courtesy to Darabont, since Shawshank also was well filmed and acted throughout. No complaints there.
But when it comes to plot it seems Darabont is trying to get away with the same thing he did in Shawshank, mixing a lot of sentimental crap in between, to make the movie more appealing to mainstream audiences. Where Shawshank was one of the rare movies to be overly sentimental, profane and grim at the same time (I still don't get how he pulled it off), and still being touching and entertaining, The Green Mile fails to do so. On one hand there are the graphic disgusting executions, and the tasteless barbeque jokes, and then there's a huge endearing innocent guy who's healing everyone. That just doesn't work.
There's probably more graphic violence in Green Mile than in Shawshank, but also more sentimentality, and besides there's a rather silly E.T wannabe subplot that's overshadowed by all of the other stuff going on. The result is a good-looking, entertaining, but empty movie.
Darabont is probably trying to make a statement about the death-penalty, but it isn't working the way it's supposed to. Just by having extremely graphic electrocutions of sympathetic characters, and inmate psychos sneering at it, it doesn't make the viewer think it's wrong. I think i actually heard someone laugh at the "barbeque-jokes", and that proves that the movie didn't do what it was supposed to. In the ending scene it's more effective even though the electrocution is shown off-screen, but it is spoiled by excess sentimentality.
The good part is that the movie isn't boring at all. It's very entertaining and the length doesn't seem to be a problem. Conclusion: to say it is an ultimate humanistic prison-epic is wrong, but to say that it's good, stylish entertainment is very close to the truth.