Product: Greenfingers [Region 2] (2002)
Rating: 2.0
Perfectly decent, perfectly inoffensive, and perfectly dull
Joel Hershman's "Greenfingers", starring the now-famous (and utterly gorgeous) Clive Owen and Helen Mirren, is a sweet, cutesy, and utterly empty British romantic comedy. In this forgettable, generic chick-flick, inmates at a British minimum-security prison take up gardening. Initially, they are understandably reluctant to garden. But, get this, gardening ends up changing their lives! And, after his parole, Owen's character even commits another crime just so he can go back to prison and garden! And Mirren's character is so impressed with the innmates' gardening that she even has them garden for her! Wow, where do people get this stuff?Of course, this being a "romantic comedy" and all, there is a romance between Owen and Mirren's daughter that is so incredibly forced, awkward, and contrived that one cannot help but cringe as the two actors attempt to gaze lustfully at each other. In addition, peppered throughout are moments of in-your-face sentimentality and supposed "uplifting moments". And none of it works.For all its good intentions, "Greenfingers" is as drab and colorless as the cinderblock walls of the inmates' rooms. It's all perfectly decent, perfectly inoffensive, and perfectly dull.