Greenfingers

Inmates at a British minimum-security prison take up gardening, even daring to enter the big competition at Hampton Court. Writer/director Joel Hershman strives for the slice-of-life, oddball whimsy of The Full Monty or The Snapper, but for all his good intentions, the film is as drab and colorless as the cinderblock walls of the inmates’ rooms. Clive Owen plays a lost soul, in jail since killing in a drunken rage, whose interest in life is rekindled by his newly discovered skill with hoe and watering can; David Kelly is the grizzled oldtimer who befriends him, and Hellen Mirren is the TV celebrity (a British Martha Stewart) who champions the prisoners’ efforts—until one of them falls for her daughter (Natasha Little). It’s all perfectly decent, perfectly inoffensive and perfectly dull.