Driving Miss Daisy

Sometimes I think my reviews might blather on too much. I love writing and expressing myself through writing, but sometimes I think I might belabor my points behind a lot of words. So many other reviewers I see on here just do a sentence or two and leave it at that. But then I think how unsatisfactory that is to read. I read one review of this movie that was, basically "Daisy's a bitch". Clever insight, there. Really outlined this movie's positives and negatives. But if ever a movie earned a one-sentence, or even a one-word review, it's Driving Miss Daisy. That singular word would be "safe". But you know I'm not gonna stop there. Driving Miss Daisy's safeness is both a blessing and a curse. This movie is so unapologetic in being safe, it's almost the world's first movie shot on Nerf foam. I think there's one swear word in the entire movie, and it's one of the lesser ones like damn or hell. It is willing to bring up complex issues like grief, racism and racially-driven violence, anti-Semitism, and illiteracy, and but it isn't willing to engage with them beyond a cursory glance, and it definitely isn't willing to let them sit with the viewer for one millisecond longer than is absolutely necessary. This movie leaves less of an impact in approaching these issues than a tree leaf falling into a swimming pool. If you asked this movie to imagine a perfect date, it would say "a quiet evening at home with some tea and listening to the radio, and an early bedtime". If it had a favorite breakfast, it would be unbuttered white toast and a glass of room temperature water. There are episodes of iCarly with more edge than Driving Miss Daisy. And yet ... there is a simple charm to it. It is entirely, and I do mean entirely, carried Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy. There is no plot to speak of, just "watch these two people from different worlds, brought together by circumstance, and see a platonic friendship blossom over many years". That's it. That's the movie. There's not even a hint of how these two people profoundly change one another, as Daisy is rather progressive to start. She's just a high-strung pain in the ass is all. There's no white savior story here where Daisy rescues Hoke in some way. It's just two old people becoming friends out of an employer-employee relationship. 90 minutes or so, in and out, done. No moral message, no profound reflection on the human condition, no nothing. Maybe I'm silly or have been hit in the head a few too many times, but I kind of respect that. It just wants to be sweet and charming in a low-key way. Its social perspective and presentation are outdated, undoubtedly, but at some point in time, they do reflect a period in time when they were current. Hiding from that or not featuring it in media doesn't make it go away, and it doesn't mean a story, even a positive one, can't be told within the parameters of those times. So, did I like it? Sure. It's nothing I'd watch again, as it's so saccharine, it makes Hallmark movies look like Sam Peckinpah, and I don't need that on repeat. Do I think it deserved the Oscar? No. It's far too cordial and soft for me to believe it's the best movie of 1989. There are movies with far more impact and far more emotional weight to them that could've and should've won over this. But just judging it as a movie ... yeah, it's fine. Better than some, not as good as others.