I can be a sucker for romantic comedies just like anyone else - good ones, that is. Green Card most definitely does not fall within that realm, which is probably a good reason why so few people remember it. Andie MacDowell is an upper crust horticulturist who finds her dream apartment in NYC with its own greenhouse. For plot purposes, only a married couple can occupy the apartment. So she enters into a marriage of convenience with Frenchman Gerard Depardieu. He to get his green card and she to nab her apartment. As the clichés fly fast and furious, naturally the two are complete opposites who cannot initially stand each other. Naturally, as they are forced to get to know each other intimately in order to fool immigration officials, the two will move towards a grudging admiration and then love. There are no particular surprises in Green Card, but then romantic comedies do have a certain formula they follow. The secret is in enjoying the banter and chemistry of the leads while they hit the familiar notes. It is impossible to see how anyone could enjoy time spent with either Bronte or George - the characters played by MacDowell and Depardieu. Bronte is the typical caricature of a hoity-toity snot, a woman who feels she is better than everyone in the room and is not provided any evidence by the film to the contrary. She seems to have little regard for other people's feelings and is herself a dreadfully dull and uninteresting person. By contrast, Depardieu is downright scary. His days as an international sex symbol long past, Depardieu arrives in the film looking a good 50 lbs. overweight, beady eyes peering from behind hanks of greasy hair, and one can somewhat understand Bronte's alarm at having to open a room up to this creepy ugly thug. Unlike MacDowell, at least Depardieu does try to lighten things up a bit, but he is cursed with a screenplay that gives him precious little to work with as well as the embarrassing habit of having every woman in the piece outside of McDowell lust after him and describe him on initial meeting as "delicious". A factor that would be laughable if it did not have the habit of making the women in question seem so pathetic in their lascivious thoughts over someone who resembles an Idaho potato. To say that the leads share non-existent chemistry is an understatement of vast proportions. No, these are actors that should not even appear in the same film, much less as a romantic coupling. As the film monotonously grinds to its conclusion, it stupidly concludes with Depardieu largely acing the immigration interview and then confessing everything to the authorities merely because he cannot remember the face cream that MacDowell uses (how many husbands can truly remember such a detail?). As the love birds are being parted, an insipid romantic dirge plays over their closing embrace with the singer wailing about how everything is going to be OK. Actually it is not OK - I have lost 90 minutes of my life to this excruciating ordeal and want someone to give it back!
Review of Green Card
