Echo Chuang has written an interesting piece on the surprising success of “Green Book” in China.
Suffice to say, in China there has been no controversy regarding the film. On Taopiaopiao, a movie-ticketing platform, Green Book has a score of 9.4/10, based on the ratings of more than 220,000 fans. On the social network and movie review platform Douban the movie has a rating of 8.9/10, “outperforming 98% of comedies and 97% of dramas.”
So far, the film has earned more than $30 million at the Chinese Box-Office, making it the highest-earning best-picture winner in China after Titanic. Not an easy feat, as Chuang mentions, “in the past many Oscar best-picture films have been viewed as niche, and haven’t done very well.”
He also says “the fried chicken scene quickly became one of the most talked about in China”
And so, the very flaws that have had critics infuriated in the U.S. have been the key to the film’s great success in China. However, what Chuang doesn’t seem to realize is that, despite backlash from journalists on social media and beyond, American audiences seem to really love “Green Book.” Its 8.3 user rating on IMdB easily makes it the high-scoring 2018 film. Its A+ CinemaScore demonstrates that general audiences don’t care what critics think. Chinese critics are saying “it’s a feel-good movie—well-paced, funny at times, and touching as the characters open their hearts to each other,” which is what most people have been telling me Stateside as well.
“As a foreign audience, we watch the movie as outsiders,” wrote Yin Wenxi (link in Chinese), a self-described film critic on Weibo. “We are touched by a simple story and interesting characters. We embrace the warmth [from the movie] in a time of transition from winter to spring.”