Main cast: Clive Owen (Colin Briggs), Helen Mirren (Georgina Woodhouse), David Kelly (Fergus Wilks), Warren Clarke (Governor Hodge), Danny Dyer (Tony), Adam Fogerty (Raw), Paterson Joseph (Jimmy), Natasha Little (Primrose Woodhouse), and Sally Edwards (Susan Hodge)
Director: Joel Hershman

I’m still cringing. Greenfingers has scary, gigantic corn trees bursting out of its seams. “Corny” doesn’t just cover this overblown, overly-saccharine tripe, try goosebumps doing Vesuvius impersonations all over my body.

Based on a true story – or so I hear – of a prisoner named Colin Briggs who, with some friends, do some gardening and are soon redeemed to become good model citizens, this movie has no shame when it comes to practicing liberal melodrama. Consider the casting alone: we have one good-looking guy, one big dumb brute, and one wisecracking joker to form the triumvirate of staleness. Other prisoners gang up on our pansies, but this movie shies away from the shower rape you know will happen in real life. Everyone’s sweet and happy, and in the end, murderers and rapists and other lowlifes in prison hold hands and cheer as they see our green-fingered heroes win some stupid flower show on TV.

Oh, and the handsome one gets the girl.

The concept of murderers finding redemption through nurturing life is a good one – although our hero is an accidental murderer, so it’s not that dark – but this movie showers the Care Bear nauseating sweetness in every scene that I find myself waiting for them all to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. The ending is this close to what I just described in the previous sentence, so people who can’t stand overblown melodrama, you’ve all been warned. Giant corn patches are everywhere in Greenfingers.