Driving Miss Daisy - 9 stars out of 10

Driving Miss Daisy - 9 stars out of 10

"Driving Miss Daisy" is truly one of the best (and most unexpected) stories of friendship that I have ever seen.  Alfred Uhry's play has never looked better than it does in this film adaptation that won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.  I regard this film so highly because it is basically a workshop in incredible acting.  There is no need for special effects or elaborate sets when you have two acting performances as fine as these.  Jessica Tandy lights up the screen at the age of 81, earning her Best Actress Oscar and truly embodying that character.  The delivery of the lines is perfect, justifying every action when it appears that she acted with a kind heart.  Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite actors and this performance is exactly why.  His uneducated Southern accent is absolutely perfection from his pronuncation of the letter "r" to each grammatical imperfection.  I am blown away that he performed this role in the same year that he played the principal in "Lean On Me" and it is truly a testament to his acting diversity.  I don't blame the Academy to giving the Best Actor Oscar to Daniel Day-Lewis in "My Left Foot," but if ever there was a performance worthy of an Oscar, it was this one.  The film establishes a duality of comedy and drama and I credit that to the banter between these two main characters.  Although the situations in the film are of a serious nature, their interactions are so cute and funny that you cannot help but smile.  This film proves that a family-friendly PG film is deserving of a Best Picture Oscar and I wish that more producers would invest in this clean entertainment.  It may not be the most complex story but the characters are vivid, the acting is superb, and the tears will flow in its final two scenes.