A commentary on marriage

What's so great about this movie? Most people dismiss Green Card as just a "romantic chick flick comedy", but it's FAR more than that. While not a "message movie", it's actually a very light commentary on the institution of marriage, and what makes it work.

It starts with a premise that everyone can recognize: two people who can barely stand each other are forced to put aside their differences for a greater good. The actual wedding (and its attendant emotions) is carefully avoided, only to drop us into the lives of our protagonists as they are suddenly forced to make their marriage of convenience appear real. Only when they do the hard work to make it real, does it actually become real: the emotions experienced are the result of the commitment, not the motivation for the commitment. In other words, if "luck is the residue of design", then love is the residue of commitment.

This is not to imply that the movie is perfect, but it does hold up very well after all these years. Yes, the clothes are very much of their time and there are a few "groanable moments", but for the most part I see no reason why people not born when the movie was written and filmed shouldn't be able to relate to the story and understand what the producers were "getting at".

With beautiful scenery and an outstanding cast, this movie was also very nearly prophetic in anticipating all the "singles in the city" movies and TV shows of the 1990s (of which Friends is the most famous example). Which is not to say that Green Card was the only movie of its time with these qualities, but merely IMHO the most exemplary. Would there be a Hallmark Channel today without movies like Green Card?


As they slept, they dreamed of the world they were now part of: a world within a world - time within time - a dream within dreams.....