GREEN AND GOLD - Mark Reviews Movies

Green and Gold, Fathom Events

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 30, 2025

Green and Gold is a movie about farming, family, faith, financial uncertainty, and football. As for the order of importance of that list, it's up for debate. Co-writer/director Anders Lindwall uses whichever one is most convenient to elicit some emotional reaction at any given moment in this story.

It's "inspired by true events"—whatever that means in the specific parlance of movies that attempt to put some amount of dramatic weight on the notion that their stories are real to some degree. This one is set in rural Wisconsin circa 1993, when milk prices were low, putting a lot of strain on farmers in America's Dairyland, and the professional football team out of Green Bay looked promising after a notable drought. Their rivals in the Windy City, as it's only named within the movie, were doing much better at the time, adding to the frustration.

What, though, does this sports talk have to do with the tale of Buck (Craig T. Nelson), a dairy farmer who's on the verge of losing the property that has belonged to his family for three generations? Well, it's the central gimmick of the screenplay, written by the director with Missy Mareau Garcia, Michael Graf, and Steven Shafer. As a joke, the bank's loan officer bets Buck that he will give the farmer another year to pay off his debt, free of interest, if the Green Bay team wins it all this season. If they don't, the bank will take the farm immediately.

This, obviously, seems like a no-brainer of an offer, if Jerry (Tim Frank), the bank man, is serious about it. Buck takes his time to agree, though, because there's so much else to establish in this movie—only for it to either go in most predictable direction possible or hit something of a narrative dead end.

Another core story component, for example, is Buck's relationship with his granddaughter Jenny (Madison Lawlor). She's sort of the center of the tale, except when the screenplay decides that the farm and the bet are more aligned with the point it wants to make at the time. She's an aspiring singer/songwriter, like her late mother before her, and also has contentious relationships with Buck, the farm, living a rural life, and the streetlight on the road leading to her home—also, for the most part, like her mom. Every morning, she shoots at the light with a rifle, and taking inspiration from one of her idols, the day she hits it is the day she leaves this place.

Jenny doesn't care about football, either, but for all of her grandfather's rigid ways and pooh-poohing of her musical dreams, she doesn't want him to lose his livelihood, home, and familial inheritance. She joins along in the sports story on occasion, watching games on TV or listening to them on the radio or traveling to the neighborhood just outside the stadium, but for the most part, Jenny has her story, while the one with Buck and the farm and his hopes that his team can pull off a miracle plays out elsewhere.

The script really does seem to be assembled as a series of broad ideas—about the importance of family, the vitality of farming as a way of life and an economic necessity, and other such good ol' heartland notions. The plot and characters revolve around those, instead of vice versa, giving the whole affair the air of browsing greeting cards and not a wholly thought-out story.

With that in mind, it's not bad exactly, because Lindwall's approach seems genuine, if far too on-the-nose and occasionally manipulative (Amusingly, the movie opens by announcing its participation with a regional fast-food chain, known primarily for their sweet dairy desserts, so that's in line with the tone here, at least). In the background, the football season progresses with its downs and ups, and our two stubborn protagonists—one with dreams of continuing life as it is and the other with aspirations to change her life entirely—clash heads in foreground. Along the way, it touches briefly upon the high suicide rate of farmers under such specific financial crises, while also giving Madison a pair of potential love interests—farmhand Aaron (Ashton Moio) and local singer Billy (Brandon Sklenar), who lives in the country but has the city in his heart. That the movie bypasses the severity of the first but dives into the particulars of the second shows how conflicted its own priorities are.

It all feels so calculated, from occasional talks of faith to a brazen bit involving Chekhov's shaky ladder. Green and Gold means well enough, although poor Jenny and her relatively innocent dreams really do get stomped upon in order for the movie to make its ultimate point about what's really important in life. Meaning well and making a good, thoughtful, and authentic movie, though, are very different things.

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