Turning Green Shines, Mostly

Project Greenlight runner-up Turning Green—about a teen in Ireland who tries to make a buck selling porn—leaves most critics pleased.

• It mixes a “generally jolly, frisky tone” with “more threatening moods,” including “an astounding left turn” from Alessandro Nivola, writes Robert Koehler in Variety. And it’s “a handsomer pic than any of the Project Greenlight winners to date.”

• Derivative, yes, but Jules Brenner at Cinema Signals still enjoys the flick. And Timothy Hutton’s presence as a “gross” and “boorish” enforcer “is a highlight and gag inducement.”
• Not so swayed is Andrew Schenker of Slant Magazine. After all, its “central narrative strand, the selling of pornography, isn't introduced until nearly two-thirds of the way in.” It's “not particularly comic or compellingly dramatic.”
• "It's no Tadpole or Igby Goes Down," Eric D. Snider writes on his website, "but it does have a protagonist who makes a living selling pornography to unsullied Irish villagers. So it has that going for it."